Digital Measures LCC, a Milwaukee-based software company focused on higher education, has been acquired by New York-based technology company Watermark.
Digital Measures provides data management software that helps higher education faculty more efficiently document their teaching, research, and service activities and track progress for annual performance and tenure review processes. The company has worked with some of the country’s largest universities, including Harvard, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, the University of Wisconsin System and Marquette.
Digital Measures chief executive officer Matt Bartel, who co-founded the company in 1999 as a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and co-founder Michael Rentas will stay on at Watermark. Bartel will have the title of president, while Rentas will remain chief technology officer.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Watermark formed in 2017 out of three large ePortfolio and assessment management providers. The acquisition of Digital Measures will allow Watermark to provide a “more comprehensive set of solutions that better support and provide members of the higher ed community,” the company said.
“We deeply value the experience Digital Measures has in understanding faculty activity reporting processes at institutions,” said Kevin Michielsen, CEO of Watermark. “That kind of experience is invaluable and aligns well with our mission of helping institutions use better data to improve learning and institutional quality.”
Digital Measures said joining Watermark will provide its clients with “an expanded set of solutions, over 65 years of combined experience developing software for higher education, and more than 1,400 partner institutions worldwide.”
“As one company, we now have the opportunity to help you more effectively manage core institutional processes, engage both faculty and students, and use better data to support both continuous improvement and accreditation needs. We believe that as one company, we’ll be able to do this better than we could have separately,” the company said.
Digital Measures employees will not be negatively affected by the acquisition, Bartel said. The company will maintain its Milwaukee office.
Last fall, Digital Measures moved into a larger office in the Mercantile Building at 220 E. Buffalo St. in Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward neighborhood to accommodate its growth. The company occupies 22,000 square feet, filling the fourth and fifth floors of the building.
