News
Pc Assist Co., Ltd. Signs Authorized Training Partner (ATP) Agreement with the U.S. Project Management Institute
Feb 2, 2023
TechnoPro Holdings, Inc. subsidiary Pc Assist Co., Ltd. signed an Authorized Training Partner (ATP) agreement with the Project Management Institute, a non-profit organization based in the United States.
Background and Purpose of the Agreement
Source: IPA, DX White Paper 2021 <https://www.ipa.go.jp/ikc/publish/dx_hakusho.html>
Amid an accelerating global digital environment, a survey conducted by Mizuho Information & Research Institute indicates that Japan faces a shortage of up to 790,000 IT professionals by the year 2030. The DX White Paper 2021 published by the Information Technology Promotion Agency, Japan (IPA) reports a significant shortage of product managers and engineers with specific IT skills in terms of the quantity of human resources available for digital business (cf. Figure).
Under its five-year medium-term management plan, Evolution 2026, the TechnoPro Group is growing its Solution Business as a business strategy, establishing a budget line item for human resources development. To accelerate the development of project managers, a role indispensable for growing its Solution Business, TechnoPro Holdings subsidiary Pc Assist, who is responsible for TechnoPro Group employee training and education, concluded an ATP agreement with the Project Management Institute to offer official Project Management Professional (PMP®) certification courses.
The TechnoPro Group aims to have 100 employees acquire PMP® certification annually, and the group is committed to hiring and training enough project managers to help it move forward under the current medium-term management plan, even in the current challenging hiring environment.
About Project Management Professional (PMP®) Certification
The PMP® certification is an international certification based on the PMBOK® project management knowledge system. This global certification is accepted widely around the world because as PMBOK® has become the de facto global standard for project management. The usefulness of the PMP® certification is known widely in Japan too, as evidenced by the fact that public agencies require PMP® certification as a condition for contract bidding. A total of 35 hours of formal study with an ATP instructor provided by a PMI-accredited ATP company is required to obtain the PMP® certification.
For more information, please visit the Project Management Institute Japan website (only in Japanese) at: https://www.pmi-japan.org/
Future Plans
The TechnoPro Holdings Evolution 2026 medium-term management plan calls for the Company to evolve its Core Business, expand its Solution and Engineer Training Businesses, and commercialize the DX Promotion Business. The initial purpose of the ATP agreement with the Project Management Institute is to support the evolution of Core Business and the expansion of Solution Business by developing managers within the Group. Going forward, the Company will leverage its expertise and experience in training to begin recruiting participants from outside the Group as soon as possible.
[About Pc Assist Co., Ltd.]
Pc Assist Co., Ltd. operates 55 Win School locations across Japan, from Hokkaido to Kagoshima. The core concept of Win School is to foster every type of professional sought by companies. Pc Assist provides training to engineers and designers in fields such as AI, data science, programming, IT networks, CAD, Web programming, and design. With more than 17,000 individuals enrolled each year, Win School provides carefully designed individual lessons and the latest learning environments to teach practical skills directly linked to work opportunities. Half of Win School students are from corporate clients, and Win School provides employee training to over 1,500 companies each year.
As a member of the TechnoPro Group, Pc Assist is also responsible for training group employees. As of the fiscal year ended June 2022, Pc Assist has trained 300,000 employees (25,830 unique participants; 29.7 hours per participant).
Website (only in Japanese): https://www.pcassist.co.jp/