The world’s leading hotel operator in 92 countries gives its employees access to the Cloud.
Accor has completed another stage in its digital revolution with the transformation of its collaborative systems by launching a Web 2.0 internal communication platform that combines a new generation intranet site – AccorLive, and a corporate social network – AccorLounge, for its 170,000 employees worldwide.
With digital technology central to guest experience in Accor hotels, the Group is now committed to a major internal cultural evolution to also support its employees. It aims to create greater worldwide exchange amongst its staff using levers like targeted and constant information streams, the sharing of ideas and good practices, the storage of multimedia content, the creation of collaborative communities and multi-channel consultation all accessed by using a professional or personal device.
Virginie Sido, SVP Accor Corporate Brand, CSR & Internal Communications, comments: “This collaborative and user-tailored system is particularly remarkable because of its international scope and operational footprint. In the head offices and hotels, whether they are owned, leased or franchised, general managers, housekeepers, receptionists or head chefs can access these new solutions from any computer whether work or personal, a tablet or a mobile phone. Our goal is to allow as many people as possible to exchange in order to foster efficiency, dialogue and creativity.”
With close to 60% of its employees aged under 35, Accor has a growing share of hyper-connected, Generation Y employees in its workforce. This population seeks greater managerial proximity and more instantaneous communication in the workplace. With these new collaborative on-line spaces, Accor aims to give its teams, 90% of whom have direct contact with customers, the means with which to share their know-how and customer relations experience with the ultimate objective of improving the performance of its hotels and the quality of its customer service.
Laurent Idrac, Accor’s Chief Information Officer, comments, “This new solution, developed with Microsoft and Orange Business Services, is based on new hybrid architecture that incorporates AccorLive, the intranet portal hosted by Accor on SharePoint2013, and AccorLounge, the integrated social network hosted in the Cloud, with Sharepoint online and Office365. There are many advantages to this system. Thanks to the Cloud, employees are able to connect from any type of professional or personal device, to benefit from a large-scale and secured sharing and file storage space and permanently evolving features.”
The platform is two-tiered:
AccorLive is a worldwide internal portal that can be fully customized by users.
– A news portal with all the Group’s latest international corporate, brand and professional news updated daily and which users can “like”, comment or share.
– The Accor Apps space which allows users to display the apps they use every day on their main page (booking tools, photo library, leave application, training catalogue, etc…)
– Direct access to the brand, profession and country intranets associated with the visitor’s profile.
AccorLounge is AccorLive’s integrated social network and is open to all employees working for Accor brands as well as Accor’s franchise and owner partners. From now on, employees that are located in the 3,600 hotels of the group can easily interact beyond geographical and hierarchical frontiers.
In this collaborative space – which just one month after it was rolled out in the head offices already, boasts 190 communities and over 3,000 members – employees are now able to:
– Create a community that can be either public (open to all) or private (selective membership) so they can exchange professional or paraprofessional themes, comment on content and develop their network of contacts. For example, head chefs, who tend not to be very mobile and rarely have contact with fellow head chefs, will be able to create their own community to share good practices and highlight their expertise (cooking times, original recipes or innovative products, etc.).
– Store or share content: all social network users are entitled to 25 GB of free online storage space for professional files (documents, videos, images).
To support the rolling-out of the platform, the Group has created with Cegos (a worldwide leader in training and development) an innovative E-learning course translated in 7 different languages in order to help the employees discover the news devices and functionalities.
Vicky is the co-founder of TravelDailyNews Media Network where she is the Editor-in Chief. She is also responsible for the daily operation and the financial policy. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Tourism Business Administration from the Technical University of Athens and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wales.
She has many years of both academic and industrial experience within the travel industry. She has written/edited numerous articles in various tourism magazines.
