As third operator in Europe for contract catering and related services, Elior applies its expertise to two markets: collective catering and facilities management (businesses and administrations, education and healthcare institutions), concession catering and travel retail (motorways, airports and towns). The group manages 13,800 restaurants and outlets, serving 2.9 million customers each day. The Elior group consists of 68,000 employees and in 2008 saw a turnover of 3.5 billion euros.
In France, Elior's corporate headquarters are based in Paris. These employees send and receive numerous documents by email on a daily basis. For the marketing, communications, and IT managers, these exchanges generate an ever-growing traffic of large and important files. This meant that the Elior group was confronted with two problems:
- The sending of documents to external third parties was a complicated matter as Elior's email system did not allow the sending or receiving of files of over 3 Mb.
- The internal sharing of files with other locations was complex, which made teamwork and collaboration difficult.
Most of the time, Elior's users were burning their documents onto CDs and relying on courier services to deliver them from A to B. This solution was not only time consuming but also created a completely unnecessary extra cost.
"As the size of our email service was limited to 3 Mb, we were experiencing difficulties sending out or sharing our documents (press reviews, models, designs, quotations, work specifications, logos...). In a group such as ours, access to information is critical. We had to find a solution which was not only simple and user-friendly but also affordable and outsourced securely," explained Thierry Leroy, director of infrastructure and support for the Elior group.
In order to deal with this problem, Elior was looking for a collaborative work solution which would meet a certain criteria in accordance with the business requirements they had put together:
- remote access for Elior employees and also for external users (partners, suppliers....)
- management of user access and action permissions
- a simple platform interface for IT novices
- respect for document confidentiality with encryption installed
- a document search feature
With branches located in numerous countries, the application had to be multilingual.
Having studied the existing solutions on the market, the Elior group's infrastructure division opted for iExtranet, developed by Oodrive. This secure file sharing solution is available as SaaS (Software as a Service), which requires no investment in hardware. Elior went for the Oodrive solution on a recommendation from Alliacom, an IT services company with whom the group collaborates.
"iExtranet matched our needs perfectly in terms of quality and price. In the same way, we were persuaded by the simplicity of the platform's hierarchy which had been personalized to our graphics scheme. Furthermore, the implementation of the solution was completed in a single day, which is pretty rare!" explained Thierry Leroy.
Another important factor was that the outsourcing of this solution allowed the IT director to focus more on his work. "The SaaS model frees us from the problems of hosting, maintenance, and security. Basically, it works without us having to do anything ourselves," he added.
Today, two years after having installed iExtranet, the various services which have been using it are completely satisfied and use it regularly. Thus the group's various subsidiaries communicate more easily by relying on the platform's accessibility using a login name and password. The users are also able to send large files or folders using a simple download link from which access can be controlled at the time. Another advantage is that thanks to the operation tracking log, it is possible to check online whether the document uploaded to iExtranet has been downloaded or not. This tracking enables the optimization of working relationships and facilitates an easier follow-up of the progress on projects.
"Finally, this solution has no impact on our budget as it amounts to an investment of 130 euros per month for 4 Gb of storage space," concluded Thierry Leroy.
The iExtranet solution offered by Oodrive has therefore responded effectively to all the needs drawn up by the Elior group.
Glossaire
Home
Contact
