Digital transformation at the heart of the 1st Economètre economic forum in La Chaux-de-Fonds

The 1st edition of Économètre, La Chaux-de-Fonds' economic forum, took place on November 11, 2022 at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, a prestigious venue conducive to creativity and sharing. The forty or so entrepreneurs present were invited to explore the theme of digital transformation through three workshops led by HE-Arc's Institut de digitalisation des organisations (IDO).

It was with great emotion that Alessandro Arcieri, the city's Economic Development Manager, presented the objectives of this forum, which he was particularly keen to organize, in order to bring together and consolidate the links between economic players, but also to promote a circular and dynamic economy worthy of the name.

Strengthening and diversifying the economic fabric is a goal that the town of La Chaux-de-Fonds has been pursuing for several years, by attracting new companies and a specialized workforce to complement existing skills. These efforts are reflected in the record figures achieved by watch exports last September, despite the difficult economic climate. It is with hope that the town has decided to look to the future.

Francesco Termine, professor at HE-Arc's IDO, recalled the strong links that exist between the business sector and the university, notably with a research department that comprises 4 specific institutes and collaborates with companies to create applicable innovation projects. Three of these projects, linked to digitalization, on topical and business-oriented themes, were the subject of the Economètre workshops.

Digital Arc Hub: a tool to measure your digital maturity

Funded by Arc Jurassien and the 4 cantons, the Digital Arc Hub (DAH) is a platform to support companies in their digital transformation. It offers three services:

• Information on digital transformation
• Digital maturity self-diagnosis tool: in 20 minutes, you can evaluate your organization according to 27 criteria divided into 9 dimensions (customer experience, product and service innovation, strategy, organization, process digitization, collaboration, culture and expertise, information technology, transformation management). The questionnaire is available in French and German. It requires an overall knowledge of the company being assessed.
• Digital maturity observatory, gathering the results of companies that have agreed to share them. All information is anonymized and available only from partner universities and chambers of commerce.

The Digital Arc Hub allows you to carry out several self-assessments of your digital maturity, to calculate your progress. You can also compare your results with :

• the overall average for the observatory (all companies in the region) ;
• by business sector ;
• by company type ;
• according to specific criteria.

After assessment, it's time for action: DAH lets you set objectives for each criterion and dimension, with estimated costs, deadlines, level of difficulty and priority. This personalized roadmap can be saved on the platform or downloaded for sharing. If you'd like to be accompanied in action, don't hesitate to call on coaching organizations like platinn.

Finally, the tool can be adapted to your needs. Requests have recently been made to carry out several in-house evaluations to compare different departments.

For further information, please contact the project manager, Maria Sokhn: maria.sokhn@he-arc.ch.

Colearnis (for Collaborative Learning System): video tutorials

With the aim of preserving and passing on company know-how, HE-Arc developed a video tutorial platform in collaboration with two local industrial partners over 18 months.

Until now, instructions have been conveyed to employees solely by means of documentation, without any guidance. Colearnis complements this reading with a 2-minute video, in which the employee films himself performing and explaining his work, with production equipment reduced to a minimum: a smartphone, a tripod and headphones. In just a few minutes, the video is created and shared on the Colearnis web application. PX Group, which helped develop the project, produced 200 videos in 6 months!

Videos are made interactive and sequenced with questions that can easily be added to the platform. There is a subtitling and automatic translation option, which can be corrected if necessary. A QR code can be created for each video. Videos can be quickly edited and combined. In this way, the application makes it possible to build a training path for all employees. Each employee can create content which, if validated, will become part of the company's know-how library.

Finally, there's a system of engagement and classification of contributors (points based on likes, shares, quality of content produced).

All data remains within the corporate network.

Video doesn't replace paper, but it complements it visually, and drastically reduces the time needed to accompany employees through basic procedures, as well as to pass on the specific know-how of departing employees.

The system will be ready for corporate integration in 2023.

For further information, please contact project manager Francesco Termine: francesco.termine@he-arc.ch.

Make IT Green: a serious game to encourage "Green by IT" actions

Green by IT, sometimes also referred to as "IT for Green" or "Green IS", is a concept that is not yet widespread, but which is emerging as an important lever enabling organizations to reduce their overall environmental footprint. Not to be confused with Green IT, which is now well known and consists of reducing the energy consumption of information technology (IT).

In order to develop this concept within companies, HE-Arc has developed a serious game to discover the Green by IT actions that an organization can carry out, as well as their ecological and financial benefits. This may concern different areas: goods and materials, energy and resources, waste and recycling, company products, company services, transport of goods, transport of people.

The game takes into account all the factors involved in implementing environmental actions: financial cost, pollution, employee reaction, short- and long-term impacts, anticipation of legislation, quarterly targets. A whole ideation process is linked to the game, and participants emerge with a set of prioritized actions contextualized to their company.

To find out more, read thededicated article on our website.

The game is an integral part of a half-day workshop that enables any organization to launch and develop Green by IT actions and projects.

If you are interested in the topic or would like to run the workshop in your organization, please contact Steve Berberat: steve.berberat@he-arc.ch.

Following the workshops and discussions with the various participants and speakers, we left the forum with a wealth of ideas. A great success which was the subject of a report on Canal Alpha: "Economètre" launches its first edition (from 10'20 min), an article in ArcInfo : Successful premiere for Economètre and an article from Ô : The 1st Economètre amidst the paintings.

Well done to the entire organizing team, and we look forward to following the digital advances of the region's companies!

Copyright photos: Ville de La Chaux-de-Fonds, Q. Perrenoud.