Photo by Erin Nelson.
ProctorU Merger
Scott Harvey, a senior graphic designer, explores T-shirt designs recognizing the merger of ProctorU with Yardstick at the Riverchase office. ProctorU has signed a contract to merge with Yardstick, a Canadian-based company with locations in Edmonton, Alberta, Toronto and Ottawa, Ontario.
Jarrod Morgan, the founder of the ProctorU online test proctoring company, has proven you can build a thriving, international technology business right here in Hoover.
He started his company 12 years ago out of Andrew Jackson University with a few part-time employees. But a January merger with a Canadian testing company called Yardstick means they now have hundreds of employees across 12 offices in six different countries.
The new parent company, Meazure Learning, will combine the best of both companies. ProctorU has years of artificial intelligence data and experience that make it what Morgan calls “the best in the world at online test proctoring.” It was originally intended for testing within colleges and universities — they do the proctoring, but the professors still deliver the tests.
“But the real magic we always wanted to do was offer professional organizations all the things they would need to run a testing program under one roof,” Morgan said.
The company started working on professional testing deals that weren’t in the university setting — think Google Cloud certifications, pre-employment training and licensure.
“What’s interesting about that market is that it needs everything to run a test,” Morgan said. “They don’t have instructors. So you have to have a suite of services to offer to those organizations.”
That’s where Yardstick steps in. That company has employees who can help write test questions. It has tools to manage people taking the exams and a platform to deliver the exam to the users. Yardstick also has data analytics that examine the effectiveness of the test questions. A certification program will now have everything it needs under one roof.
This deal, which raised $30 million in growth capital, has been in the works since Morgan met Yardstick President Isabelle Gonthier in Toronto last year. They realized how powerful a merger between their companies would be in the testing market, Morgan said.
“It was one of those rare opportunities where one plus one equals three instead of two,” he said.
ProctorU will be able to put all its focus on higher education with this merger. Previously, the same group of people would be working with both universities and professional organizations.
Gonthier said in a news release that the merger enables the two businesses to focus on their respective markets, each with its own brand and a dedicated team to ensure they collectively stay at the forefront of both professional testing and higher education.
ProctorU’s headquarters will remain in Hoover, where it all began 12 years ago. Morgan said it’s a great place to live and to grow a business.
“Hoover is the headquarters of ProctorU because we love this community,” he said. “We’ve grown up here. We’ve proven that you can grow a thriving technology business right here in Hoover.”
In addition to support from community leaders, Morgan said the success of his business has come from many incremental good decisions.
“If you spend too much time looking at the top of the stairs, you’ll trip on the step you’re on,” he said. “We’ve been very pragmatic on what steps we need to take next. And sometimes the step you need to take is a gigantic one, like merging with a company in Canada. Sometimes the next step you take is a single hire who is a critical need for the business.”
With the merger happening on the dawn of a new decade, this merger comes at the right time, Morgan said. He predicts that testing methods in the 2020s will see a drastic change.
“If you look at the traditional ways of testing, they’re not all that different than the way people tested in the ’90s and the ’80s,” he said. “Maybe at some point you replaced the piece of paper with a computer, but it’s still not all that different. You go sit somewhere, and you take a test.
“We think the way people test in the 2020s is going to be significantly different than the way people have tested in previous decades,” Morgan said. “That’s why we’re so excited about the Yardstick merger. It finally puts all of those capabilities under one roof.”
