Innovating at Scale: How Sodexo Leverages Braineet's Innov’Hub for Global Success

Unleashing potential across continents

Embracing change for global impact

Sodexo, a global leader in diversified services, operates across a myriad of sectors, presenting unique challenges in maintaining consistent innovation and growth. This case study explores how Sodexo embraced Braineet's Innov’Hub to revolutionize its approach to innovation, enhancing its ability to do better and different to retain and grow our customer base.

Overcoming internal barriers to pave the way for progress

Navigating the complex landscape of global operations, Sodexo’s Innovation Department faced significant hurdles. As noted in the interview, "We struggled to interact with the broader organization, which hindered our innovation capabilities. There was a prevailing fear of risk and failure, creating a significant barrier to progress.".

The power of Innov’Hub: Centralizing innovation and communication

A single platform for diverse needs

Innov’Hub emerged as a pivotal solution, offering a centralized platform for fostering innovation and overcoming communication barriers. The platform served as a knowledge hub, enabling Sodexo to streamline its innovation processes and engage employees across various levels.

Implementation journey: From concept to reality

The rollout of Innov’Hub was a carefully orchestrated process. "Adopting Innov’Hub was like planting a seed of change – it required nurturing and patience," reflects a project leader from Sodexo. This approach ensured a smooth transition and widespread acceptance within the company.

The impact of Innov’Hub

The fruits of this endeavor were clear. Innov’Hub not only improved internal communication but also boosted engagement in innovation challenges and sustainability efforts. We saw a remarkable increase in participation in our digital training programs, highlights a Sodexo manager, underscoring the platform's effectiveness.

Interview with Emma

Tell me a little about your company. What do you love about workingthere? What are your company goals and main challenges?

Ilike the variety of our business and customers. We connect with businesses andso many different types of customers in different places, from serving prisonsto corporates.

Thisdiversity is a tremendous challenge for our innovation. Most of our customersare global and so diverse, there’s no one size fits all. What we can implementin an airline lounge is so different that what we can do for a school. Ourobjective is to do better and different to retain and grow our customer base.  

Tell me about your department. How is it positioned in the company andhow is the department structured? What other teams are you working closelywith? What are the department goals and main challenges?

Ourdepartment is split between Internal and Open innovation.

InternalInnovation’s mission it to support our businesses while the Open Innovation teamfocuses on finding the best partners including startups to accelerate and tobecome more agile. We scout the best partners, collaborate closely with them toprove the value and deploy at scale. We also have a team of analysts looking atmarket data and trends to help us understand where we should invest next.

Weare working with our Digital Transformation team as well who is responsible forlooking at the next sexy field, such as Digital Cleaning or Robotics.

It’svery challenging for our Innovation Department to interact with our Businesses.There are so many silos in an organization like ours with multiple Entities andCountries. We kind of struggle to interact with people below Senior Leaders. Wetry different strategic conversations and we just hustle to explain to the Businessesthat we are actually there to help them. We are their “servants”. We still havea very steep mountain to climb in that regard.

Tell me about your role. What are your goals and challenges?

I’mreally trying to build a network of “innovators”. But the terminology here isprobably wrong. It’s more about people who are looking for problems to solveand start to think about how we could do it. It doesn’t need to be disruptiveor expensive for that matter. They just refuse the status quo. Because theprimary obstacle that we are facing at Sodexo to innovate is actually the fearfactor. The fear of risk, the fear of not being compliant, the fear of failure.

Anotherobstacle is that people change roles frequently. They move to a new role every5 years or so, and they don’t want to do anything risky in that time frame. Ourissue then is to deploy innovation in the long run.  

Comingfrom the front line, I thought that Innovation at the group level was a quitepoor. My objective is to change this perception from our employees. People needto tell us about their needs so that we can help them.

How did you implement Braineet? How are you organized today? (team,process, governance)

Everyonetalks about innovation. But the reality is that it is viewed as a nice to have.We struggle to communicate at Sodexo. That’s why we need to manage all thevaluable innovation knowledge very wisely today.

Wehave a strong core segment of our employees worldwide using Innov’Hub - ourBraineet platform - frequently. We communicate around events such as “EarthDay”. Innov’Hub. is essentially a mean to access valuable knowledge aboutInnovation and Sustainability more and more.

When did you first notice results? What were they?

Innov’Hubis the launchpad to our Innovation tools and resources. If people want toaccess our Yammer Feed they can go to Innov’Hub.

Innov’Hubhas become the center, the core of our Innovation. If an employee at Sodexoanywhere in the world is not very sure where to find this, she goes toInnov’Hub. Without Innov’Hub people wouldn’t be able to find quickly what theyneed.

Forexample, all our digital training, our mature solution catalog, our innovation challengesare flowing through Innov’Hub. It is now a very key piece of our business, ofour innovation. It’s also a place where you can read good news about the futureof the company.

What advice would you have for others considering Braineet?

Thekey thing is that you can’t just deploy something like Innov’Hub like this. Youneed clear objectives, an action plan and a lot of work to achieve a greatreturn on investment.

Thequality of the interface is really important. Take Google for example. Everyoneis used to discover a different landing page every day, they expectpersonalization, they want a high quality of search. The same goes for Netflix.People have high experience expectations now, in their personal andprofessional lives.

There’sa huge level of investment from our Innovation team to show relevant content onInnov’Hub, to animate it and communicate fresh news and new learnings. It’s alabor of love really and it’s why that’s the reason why it’s working so well.