eCollege’s Product Vision to Drive Profitable Growth and Regulatory Compliance
DENVER – September 13, 2004 – eCollege(SM) [Nasdaq: ECLG], a leading provider of value-added information services to the post-secondary education market, today announced its product advancement vision driven by a focus on student retention, operational efficiency and program reporting, which yields top and bottom line growth for institutions, and supports regulatory compliance.
In the fourth quarter this year, eCollege will launch the eCollege Content Manager v1.0 for institutions to centrally manage content across multiple courses and programs. In the first quarter of 2005, the company will release its Program Intelligence Manager v1.0, which will allow institutions to analyze activity data since they began delivering their online programs through the eCollege platform. This will enable institutions to identify key variables that will drive program improvement and benchmark themselves against other online programs. Additionally, over the next year, eCollege will continue advancing its Program Administration System, which powers the efficient and effective management and growth of an institution’s online operation.
“Helping our customers grow profitably, coupled with the importance of facilitating regulatory compliance given the increasing complexity of many institutions today, is the foundation of our product planning and prioritization,†said Oakleigh Thorne, chairman and CEO of eCollege. “By focusing on the cornerstones of content management, business intelligence and program administration, our product roadmap aligns with our customers’ evolving needs as online education continues to become even more central to their overall missions.â€
The new product advancements can help customers drive enrollment and revenue growth through increased student retention and program quality. The advancements also help customers achieve profitable growth by providing operational efficiencies through centralized content asset management. Finally, the advancements can help improve the controls and reporting necessary for accreditation, financial aid (Title IV funding) and accessibility (Section 508) compliance by giving customers the ability to analyze course and program data.
eCollege Content Manager – This functionality enables customers to centrally author, manage, share, control and deploy content for easier maintenance and reusability across the institution. The eCollege Content Manager will help institutions:
- • Reduce content creation and maintenance costs by enabling a content object to be developed and updated once for delivery to many channels
• Increase student retention by ensuring the consistency and quality of learning content through centralized management
• Facilitate the ability to meet accreditation requirements by standardizing content delivery, enabling more granular tracking of user learning outcomes, and providing a centralized view of program-wide content
• Simplify content migration and reduce implementation efforts through a seamless integration with eCollege’s Teaching Solutions application, providing a suite of content migration tools and leveraging the system’s roles and rights functionality
Program Intelligence Manager – This is a set of business intelligence tools that will leverage a new data warehousing architecture, allowing administrators to efficiently analyze course and program data to identify key drivers for program improvement and success. Because the functionality is integrated into eCollege’s ASP solution, the system has the unique ability to capture and analyze current and historical data. The Program Intelligence Manager will help institutions:
- • Increase student retention by identifying key drivers to student course completion, including “at-risk†behavior trends as well as “successful†user tracking profiles
• Reduce the cost of retaining accreditation by having quick access to compliance information
• Retain and justify Title IV funding by having sophisticated student analysis and tracking
• Gain insight into the key performance indicators of programs and compare them with anonymous data from same-sized institutions in order to identify targeted areas for improvements
Program Administration System – This suite of tools enables administrators, especially those who oversee large, multiple-school operations, to centrally or departmentally manage overall planning, preparation and execution across numerous online programs, schools and campuses. The enhanced Program Administration System will help institutions reduce operational costs and improve the speed and ease of course creation and duplication by providing greater efficiencies. Enhancements will include an advanced toolset that puts control into the hands of administrators and back-end system integration that facilitates real-time data exchange.
eCollege’s product roadmap builds upon the company’s long-time focus on providing all of the critical components for online program success. eCollege’s outsource solution, which has been designed specifically to support the unique needs of the distance education market, powers the profitable growth of its customers’ online programs. For example, as of the end of the second quarter of 2004, eCollege’s top 20 customers had grown their enrollments by 84% from the same period in 2003. Additionally, revenue growth for those institutions outpaced enrollment growth for the same period.
“We have always made it a priority to focus on full online programs, and as we continue to advance our outsource solution into an even more complete product suite, we can help our customers drive the kind of growth they want to achieve in their programs,†said Doug Kelsall, president and chief operating officer of eCollege. “We believe these advancements will have a meaningful impact on the continued success of our customer’s operations.â€
About eCollege
eCollege [Nasdaq: ECLG] is a leading provider of value-added information services to the post-secondary and K-12 education markets. The Company’s eLearning Division designs, builds and supports some of the most successful, fully online degree, certificate/diploma and professional development programs in the country. The Company’s Enrollment Division, Datamark, Inc., helps institutions build new enrollments and increase student retention. Customers include publicly traded for-profit institutions, community colleges, public and private universities, school districts, and state departments of education. eCollege was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Denver. Datamark was founded in 1987 and is headquartered in Salt Lake City. For more information, visit www.eCollege.com
and www.Datamark.com.
This news release contains statements that are not historical in nature and that may be characterized as “forward-looking statements†within the meaning of the securities laws, including statements regarding: the collaborative development of a content management system and the success and expected results thereof, including its integration into the eCollege platform; functionality of developments; adequacy of developments to support customer requirements; expected cost savings to customers; system security; the delivery and management by our project partners of a computing infrastructure; our ability to leverage technologies; the timeline of implementation of projects; and any other statements that are not historical facts. You can identify such statements when you see words such as “will,†expect,†“plan,†“believe†and similar expressions. These statements are based on management’s current expectations and are subject to a number of uncertainties and risks. Actual results may differ materially. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from estimates or projections contained in the forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to: competition in the highly competitive online learning market; the possibility of failures of our network infrastructure and computer systems; our ability to protect our intellectual property rights; the impact of laws and regulations affecting education and the Internet; the timing of our sales cycle may cause variable operating results; the cost of marketing activities; our dependence on key personnel; and such other factors as are discussed in our most recent Form 10-Q/A Quarterly Report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which report you are encouraged to review in connection with this release. We believe that these forward-looking statements are reasonable; however, you should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which are based on current expectations and speak only as of the date of this release. We are not obligated to publicly release any revisions to forward-looking statements to reflect events after the date of this release.
eCollege is a service mark of eCollege. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
