Innovating Luxury: LVMH's Strategic Leap with Braineet's Platform

Embracing diversity and excellence

LVMH's journey in reinventing luxury

LVMH, a conglomerate synonymous with luxury, is celebrated for its diversity of trades and unique cultures across different sectors. The company's primary challenge lies in aligning 83 countries and 75 Houses towards a unified direction, despite differing work cultures and practices. A key executive passionately states, "The diversity in our group is what makes us rich, but also presents our greatest challenge in moving forward together."

LVMH House - The pinnacle of innovation

Shaping future leaders and innovators

Within LVMH House, three pillars stand out: leadership learning, open innovation with DARE and Startup House programs, and transforming HR culture. A personal touch is added, "Our role is to equip talents and managers for future challenges, transforming work culture in a new world."

The Braineet solution: A platform for collective progress

The decision to integrate Braineet's platform was driven by the need for an accessible, flexible solution that aligns with LVMH's values. The platform was chosen for its ability to foster collaboration and its flexible co-creation approach. "Braineet stood out for its human relationship and roadmap flexibility," shares a key decision-maker.

Rapid deployment, measurable success

The integration of Braineet at LVMH was swift and efficient, quickly garnering positive feedback. The platform played a key role in breaking down information silos and enhancing cross-branch communication, thereby fostering a culture of shared innovation.

Interview with LVMH

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

What I like about the LVMH group in particular is the diversity of jobs and people. We talk to very different people, in Perfumes and Cosmetics with a unique culture, when we talk to someone in Fashion Leather Goods, it's different. Each of our 83 countries also has its own special difference, its own culture, so it's very rich. 

There's a real subject of Talent. People are brilliant within the Group, it's quite incredible. One of the Group's priority challenges is "How do we get 83 countries and 75 companies to evolve in the same direction? Why, because 83 countries means 83 different ways of working, and the same for the companies. It's a real complexity in terms of how we move forward in the future. Also, because of the products we offer, we have a real know-how with a strong heritage, which is anchored in us, but we sometimes have difficulty in detaching ourselves from it in our way of working in practice. We also have a subject to make it evolve to enter the future. We must continue to preserve our values such as "Empowerment" while modernizing. 

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

I am part of the LVMH House. An entity that has 3 pillars: 

• Learning for high level people
• Open Innovation with the DARE and Startup House programs
• Transformation of the HR Culture

For me, and this is my personal way of saying it, this is an entity that is in fact in charge of equipping talents and managers on the subjects of the future. Training management in this new world, reinventing careers, transforming the work culture. 

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

My role is essentially to manage the NEXT platform and find the right levers to drive this new work culture forward. How do we get people to adopt the platform and collaborate in a new way? How do we use data to help managers identify what is trending among employees by country and by company? How do we create this exchange between content, actions and managers?   

What was going on at your company that led you to us? How serious was the problem?

We absolutely needed a platform, accessible to all collaborators. We needed a flexible platform to propose ideas easily, with a trusted partner. We met a number of partners, but it was really the human relationship with the Braineet team, their recommendations and the flexibility of co-creation of the roadmap that convinced us to choose Braineet. 

The problem we had is that we are all aware that during the last 3-4 years there are big upheavals in society: Demonstrations in Hong Kong, the Covid crisis, Black Lives Matter, Great Renegotiation in the US, War in Ukraine. This has created insecurity and discomfort for the employee. For some people in some countries, the company is a place of refuge. It is up to companies to provide security, their role has evolved. Their role has evolved. Employees have expectations. There is a real challenge at LVMH to address the expectations of our employees by changing our work culture. 

What was the impact on the business not to solve it ? Any idea about the cost of not solving it?

I am proud to belong to a company that addresses these types of issues and is willing to ask its employees for their opinion.  

In particular, we managed two campaigns around the Inclusion Index to highlight the initiatives of the various companies on two subjects: Gender Equity and LGBTI. We realized that there were a lot of things already in place within the companies and in certain countries, but not necessarily visible and known to the rest of the world. We used the NEXT platform to highlight all these initiatives. To collect people's opinions, their votes. It worked very well with a lot of commitment from the houses and regions. And we will soon reward the winners of this prize. It's good to reinvent yourself but it's very important to highlight what is already done locally and can be deployed on a larger scale. 

What solutions did you try before you came to us? What results did you see?

We had tested many solutions, a lot. What I particularly liked about Braineet was the flexibility on the roadmap, our exchanges and the team's recommendations. There is never anything blocking anything, we discuss and it integrates into the roadmap. 

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

We have centralized the project with LVMH House. We exchange with different stakeholders on the next themes to be highlighted. We are creating Calls for Contribution on our strategic subjects. Our goal is to deploy this project within the Group in a more "democratic" way, to get in touch with the companies, to understand their local expectations and from there to define more local issues. We want to "empower" the companies and regions to launch more topics. 

In concrete terms, we had a Lumapps platform, which is an intranet for presenting static content and news. But it did not offer this ideation part. Having forms, proposing ideas, putting tags, categorizing them, it was not possible on Lumapps. So we integrated Braineet into Lumapps to add this much more lively part created by the Group's employees. 

How did you communicate to your teams about Braineet to adopt it? Did you have to face some change management challenges to implement Braineet ? How did you overcome them?

On the communication front, we are still learning. We have several levers to play with: 

• Official global channels to show that LVMH is putting this forward. Mailing and global events. 
• Going through the HR departments of the companies to use each company's own channels and create ownership. We contacted the HR departments of the companies, and they highlighted the platform and the issues at events, which were pretty great.
• We also use goodies, posters with QR codes in the offices so that employees see NEXT everywhere!
• There is also a channel of "Champions", who are early adopters who will spread the word locally.

When did you first notice results? What were they?

Concretely, we already have a community of 10,000 employees, and 250 initiatives promoted to all employees. For us, this is already a lot. It means that we already have these initiatives that are visible and actionable by all employees. We also have a strong commitment in certain regions that are particularly highlighted. 

We have selected a few Index initiatives that have particularly appealed to employees. We also have concrete actions that have been born from Next on EllesVMH that will be announced soon. 

In the future, what other problems could Braineet solve for you or the company?

There is always more diversity of content that employees want to share. We plan to conduct our surveys directly via the platform as well. 

What advice would you have for others considering Braineet?

It is absolutely necessary to prove the interest to the company. Explain why it is interesting to have an innovation platform on the work culture. You really need to have data, to go and meet the employees and managers to understand what their expectations are for the future and to make sure that the solution you propose corresponds to their expectations. You have to take your time for the launch if it's the first time you're launching this initiative. It's new, you have to take the time to reassure, and to explain very clearly with a real Change process.