HEG-Arc | ProConcept

Arc business school (HEG)

Arc Business School (or HEG Arc, with HEG standing for la haute école de gestion), was founded in 1982 as ESCEA. In today’s highly competitive landscape of higher education options across Switzerland, HEG Arc must present itself as a curriculum leader to attract new students. To achieve this goal, the institution is continually developing its range of training. HEG Arc offers students both part- and full-time courses, covering human resources, management, and economics to name a few. HEG Arc has also successfully introduced post-graduate studies in various fields, as well as corporate and government training and certification courses. To keep its curriculum both interesting and relevant, HEG Arc works closely with a broad network of universities, educational institutions, and private sector companies (foreign and domestic).

Why ProConcept ERP?

As part of ongoing teaching and research activities, professor and faculty member Philippe Daucourt decided to devote himself to procuring an ERP system. After assessing a number of different systems, HEG Arc turned to ProConcept ERP from ProConcept. HEG Arc chose ProConcept ERP because the system inherently met all of HEG Arc’s functional requirements. A Swiss-made software solution, ProConcept ERP is designed to fit the legal, financial and process requirements of Swiss companies. HEG Arc also liked the proximity of ProConcept’ local industry, process and product experts to provide ongoing support of the solution.

The main contributions of ProConcept ERP

Regarding education, HEG Arc offers two possible tracks of study for the corporate sector: a Bachelor of Science in Economics and Management or in Information Systems. As part of the first track, the students learn about a range of management tools—including software solutions for data processing, enterprise resource planning (ERP), business intelligence, etc. Meanwhile, management computer scientists conduct practitioner-based training in the field. In their third year, these students take a course on ERP that is illustrated using the ProConcept ERP software solution. Another course covers Business Process Management (BPM) software—which also can be illustrated using ProConcept ERP.

As part of their curriculum, two professors use two virtual machines to install 100 instances of ProConcept ERP (representing 100 companies). As a result, each student has his or her own company and can use the tool at will. HEG Arc also offers applied research services to companies and organizations of the Jura. These services focus on analyzing the computerization and logistics management of various companies associated with the association. Several other projects have been completed by the HEG Arc and ProConcept, such as a workshop on Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA). In addition, the information systems faculty at HEG Arc participated in ProConcept’ 2008 annual user event, presenting its important educational partnership with ProConcept to more than 500 customer attendees.

Future Prospects

Given the excellent experiences and professional exchanges between ProConcept and HEG Arc, especially in the form of training courses offered directly from ProConcept product experts, the future is already planned. "Indeed, with all the experience and time invested in our initial implementation of ProConcept ERP within the HEG Arc, it will be interesting to push this mutually beneficial collaboration forward," said Daucourt.

HEG Arc is not the only education institution to maintain a very close collaboration with ProConcept. Other facilities include: