News & Insights
We believe that higher education deserves better software,
and employees deserve better work environments.
Enterprise software is so much more valuable than only the data stored in it. Institutional knowledge is deeply intertwined with the software used to run universities.
Universities deserve to lead the way in developing software solutions that fit their specific needs.
The word “home”. It’s inviting, familiar, and comforting. But in certain contexts, it can take on a somewhat negative connotation. This includes in-house software within higher education, often referred to as a homegrown solution. But does homegrown software deserve a bad rep?
Universities ask the vendor during the purchasing process, “does your software support [this unique need that my university has]?” The vendor has to either figure out how to support that request, or they have to convince the university that they don’t really need that specific capability.
Within higher education, strategic decisions have to be made in order to best serve campus communities. How does this impact an institution's choice to use a homegrown versus vendor enterprise software solution?
A prominent university rolled out a new enterprise software system to replace an aging homegrown legacy system. By many conventional measures, the project was "successful." But the staff and IT leadership hated the new system and wished they could go back to the old legacy system. What went wrong?
Commitment to change is more than a statement - it requires action. We have decided to pause, perhaps indefinitely, any engagement through Twitter. We absolutely will not support any platform, person, or entity that allows racism, anti-semitism, sexism, or any other form of hate speech to go unchecked.
In the early ’90s, an SIS was created for CWSL to store critical student data. In 2021, CWSL set out to modernize the school’s software platform, but the project didn’t go quite as planned. Here’s how the diverse law school began their partnership with West Arete to build an innovative, custom solution for their campus community.
We close West Arete on Juneteenth as a small but concrete way for the business to show respect—to give pause and weight to these historic milestones of freedom and empowerment in our country's history. We close as a celebration of Black Americans’ culture. And we close to recognize that our work is not done.
People often wrestle with the cost of a high-end laptop, because they run thousands of dollars. We did the math and it's totally worth it to buy top-of-the-line equipment for employees.
The first step is often a zero-pressure phone call to answer questions and explore whether we both feel that there could be a fit.