About HEP-Bejune
Switzerland sorely lacks teachers, and the problem shows few signs of improvement. Two of the primary catalysts are an aging population of teachers, as well as the attractiveness of teaching in the private sector (versus the public sector). To remedy this growing problem, High Pedagogical Schools (HEP) are working hard to try to convince young people to choose the noble career of being a teacher.
The 'Haute Ecole Pédagogique BEJUNE' is a teacher training college for the cantons of Berne (the French speaking part), Jura, and Neuchâtel. Its activities are spread over three sites – Bienne, Delémont, and La Chaux-de-Fonds –, and employs close to 200 employees.
The creation of the HEP-BEJUNE in 2001 was a large-scale construction, born from the merger of several cantonal organizations. The institution has been an integral part of the Swiss 'hautes écoles', grouped inside the Swiss universities association. On the international front, the organization has created close links with other institutions, especially in France and Canada.
Each year the HEP-BEJUNE trains several hundred students in different degrees of teacher training in compulsory and post-compulsory education, from primary to secondary levels. They also propose a specialized training program and supply various further training and postgraduate training offers aimed at the 6000 active teachers that the BEJUNE area is home to.
The institution also has a research center to help train future teachers using avant-garde methods in educational science. The HEP-BEJUNE contributes to the valorization and circulation of know-how through several publications that run from teaching methods to turning ideas into action, articles, and even research reports. And finally its media library that makes documental and multimedia resources available for the entire educational community in the BEJUNE region.
Why ProConcept?
With the management of applications, personnel, administration, students and IT resources, HEP-Bejune knew there needed to be some sort of business system that would be able to regulate such intertwining activities. ProConcept presented ProConcept ERP and its VDoc platform as the ideal automated solution for HEP-Bejune.
"The main advantage of the solution is the standardization of application management tasks and processes for all three entities within HEP-Bejune,” said Julian Corbat, head of IT service management, when asked about ProConcept’ overall contribution to the organization. “The quality of our data and our work is guaranteed by the homogeneity of the tasks performed. In addition, our administrative burden has been significantly reduced.”
In addition to using ProConcept ERP for financial management, the school also uses the VDoc solution to manage application monitoring. Formerly managed by Excel lists from three different sites, the management of applications has been fully automated. "The information is kept up to date in our job database to ensure information consistency across different platforms,” said Corbat. “Our different sites are now directly linked with core business data. And there are many other features within the system that HEP-Bejune can leverage.”
The Implementation Process
Like any major change, the replacement of IT systems requires a period of adjustment. During this time, the people with daily access to the system need to be trained and monitored to ensure the utilization of all the features available to them. "We lacked time for training and especially for testing,” said Corbat. “But with the support of ProConcept’ consultants and product experts, we were able to accomplish both tasks with clarity, precision and effectiveness.” The ProConcept team also assisted HEP-Bejune in the modeling and creation of new processes as part of the system implementation.
Development Projects
After the successful introduction of a process management tool and a pilot project framework, HEP-Bejune has chosen to continue working with ProConcept to implement a document management system that will help with the archival of student files and records. The project will also involve EDM (electronic data management) work to ensure that the organization’s data is always available, centralized, current, accurate and consistent.
