IMD elevates campus experience with navigation app

“Our campus experience is second to none in terms of pedagogy,” says Louis Leclézio, chief digital and customer experience officer at IMD. “We wanted to offer a holistic experience by blending the physical and virtual worlds.”

IMD, located on the picturesque shores of Lake Geneva, is a hub of academic excellence with state-of-the-art lecture halls and conference rooms. Amenities are tailored to executives, with advanced videoconference facilities, dedicated study spaces, and an on-campus restaurant.

IMD needed to refresh its campus network to deliver a first-class digital experience. Its old-style network – a wireless LAN controller and a big stack of switches – couldn’t deliver the fast, reliable connectivity and indoor location services that the campus navigation app required. IMD also wanted to streamline network support, with better visibility and tools to spot and fix problems sooner.

Over 29,000 executives and experienced professionals participate in IMD programs every year, including almost 10,000 participants who are physically at IMD. Their Wi-Fi experience is transformed, allowing them to work and navigate anywhere on campus.

With the IMD campus app on their phones, program participants, guest speakers, and faculty receive a welcome notification when they arrive on campus for classes or an event. Their daily agenda is at their fingertips, with a map and detailed directions to find their destinations. They can use the app to easily locate colleagues on the map or preview the lunch menu.

The Juniper Mist network is more sustainable from an IT support perspective, too, which frees up time for strategic work and innovation. With plentiful Wi-Fi, fewer people need to plug into the wired network. That means IT needs to make fewer adds, moves, or changes to the wired network, eliminating hours of work for every change. IT no longer has to update wireless LAN controller or access point software, and new features are delivered regularly from the Juniper Mist cloud. This allows the team to explore new capabilities, such as Generative AI integration with the Marvis virtual assistant.

The International Institute for Management Development (IMD), a global leader in executive education, draws over 29,000 participants annually. To enhance its digital experience and support a campus navigation app, IMD needed to upgrade its outdated network. IMD selected Juniper’s AI-Native Networking solution, incorporating wireless, wired, and indoor location services.