Richardson, Texas – acadami and its local sponsor, Xplor UK & Ireland, are pleased to announce the first class of Electronic Document Associates. The graduates attended a full week of intensive acadami education courses: Document Production Fundamentals, Document Systems Life Cycle, and Document Production Best Practices. By completing these courses and spending at least two years in the document industry, Andrea Dunne, Chris Cable, Paul Peters, and Mark Haywood (all of Lloyds Banking Group) immediately became eligible for the new EDA designation.

All courses by acadami that are certified by Xplor International require attendees to pass a written examination as well as meet the attendance requirement in order to qualify for Xplor Continuing Education Units (CEUs).

The newly-announced EDA designation by Xplor is intended for specialists who have completed significant "foundation" training on electronic documents (five days of Xplor Continuing Education certified training or the equivalent) and have been engaged with electronic document related work for at least two years. acadami's week-long program of professional training provides the 50 education units necessary to earn the EDA designation. This program provides both a broad foundation of training for the industry professional as well as a substantial short cut to the first level of industry certification.

"In a study commissioned by EDSF and conducted by Infotrends, it was found that there were significant shortfalls in the skill sets of employees, particularly in the areas relevant to variable data printing and transpromo. acadami addresses this problem by offering first-class, vendor-neutral education to industry professionals in the transaction document space, and by supporting Xplor professional designation programs," said William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, acadami's registrar and co-founder.

"The EDP Commission of Xplor International has recently developed an additional recognition level, the Electronic Document Associate (EDA), to recognize the thousands of specialists who have the foundation but are not yet ready for full professional certification," says Bill Broddy, vice-chair of the EDP Commission and acadami co-founder. "We are delighted to lay that foundation for the benefit of both employers and employees, through acadami's one week Transaction Document School."