Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Integrative Projects program offers companies an opportunity to integrate and benefit from GEM student skills to solve an operational or strategic challenge. Tessi, a key European actor in Business Process Services, shares its experience with the Integrative Projects program.
Every year, companies that wish to confirm an operational position or refine and validate a strategy call upon the expertise of Grenoble Ecole de Management students. As a result, companies and organizations from all types of sectors give specific missions to teams of three to six students with a variety of profiles and experiences. The team collaborates with the company to explore an issue over the course of three to eight month depending on the program. The student team then delivers a set of recommendations at the end of their mission.
Thus, the Integrative Projects program offers a win-win educational initiative: it acts as a catalyzer for student knowledge and fosters an innovative perspective by students to analyze a concrete challenge. This helps to anchor the students' learning process. For the company, the project offers feedback on a specific issue, promotes the company's employer brand, and sometimes, opens the way for the recruitment of rare talent.
A strategic analysis
From October 2019 to June 2020, Tessi called upon the services of four students in the Information Systems Management program at GEM. "The students, who already had experience, were very interested in information systems and their impact on business," highlights Jean-Luc Vecchio, CEO of Tessi in Switzerland. The study requested by Tessi focused on the organization of its Cloud services for various sectors: banking, industry, etc. "The goal of this strategic analysis was to prepare arbitration for client data hosting services: in particular, in terms of choosing a partner hosting service and defining characteristics for our own hosting environment."
Defining a project
"Clearly defining the mission ensures the project is carried out in an optimal setting," underlines Jean-Luc. In the case of Tessi, the team of GEM students was briefed and coached by a Tessi employee in collaboration with GEM mentors in order to define and clearly set the goal and framework for the mission. "The more the subject is clearly and narrowly defined, with support throughout the project, the more the results will be relevant. At Tessi, we can clearly see the difference with a previous project experience that was less clearly defined. Yet the previous project still enabled us to highlight our employer brand and identify potential talent that we later recruited as head of digital marketing for Switzerland, France, Spain and UK."
A method with promising results
The methodology includes the need to create a glossary of shared vocabulary as well as the collection of qualitative and quantitative data (with the help of a Tessi employee). "The students were able to register 15 qualitative points of feedback that reinforced our first intuition. The study built on key figures, comparisons and other relevant content. With this confirmation we will build a useful and relevant roadmap," adds Jean-Luc.
The student team's work was summarized in a written report and an oral presentation that were carefully evaluated. "Finally, this study and its recommendations enabled Tessi Switzerland to confirm arbitrations that are essential for our offer," concludes Jean-Luc Vecchio.
