Sanofi& Witco
Image credit: STUDIOS Architecture
Provide a top-notch workplace experience, in any of their offices in the world.
With the COVID pandemic, people became accustomed to working remotely. As a consequence, work culture and sense of belonging were strongly (and negatively) impacted. Sanofi has then realized the importance of providing quality workspaces for their employees. Whether they’d like to work remotely or look forward to spending more time in the office, being able to think and work in a modern, sustainable, and innovative ecosystem became essential.
"Honestly, I don't think the office is dead. When you come to the office, you want to have that positive experience and feel that sense of belonging, because that's where you really capture the energy of your company and all its values. Our offices have a strong symbolic value in terms of who we are, what we stand for and what is important to us." as mentioned by Julia Ghouti, former workplace architect lead at Sanofi.
As a result, Sanofi decided to initiate a Facility Management transformation program to create a strong hospitality culture and drive engagement in the workplace, based on 6 pillars:
- Foster new ways of working around mobility, agility & hybrid work
- Propose innovative & attractive workspaces to employees, taking into account the evolution of home working internal rules
- Consider the employee experience & formalized expectations
- Transform the daily workplace management tasks thanks to digital & innovation
- Promote sustainability, health & wellbeing in the workplace
- Make office sites more efficient
Sanofi needed a strong and well-balanced digital solution that could enable their workplace management teams to create a unique, memorable and top-notch employee experience – in every office.
Sanofi’s ambitions were high and supported with a clear, global vision
Before engaging discussions with Witco, Sanofi had already experienced building a workspace app, with the help of a custom-development software agency, to cater for their needs.
After a few years, Sanofi had to recognize it was a challenge (and a struggle) to make their in-house application evolve quickly and cost-effectively enough – in parallel with their needs growing in number, complexity and geographical scope. This is when they started looking for an external, best-in-class software provider.
Their needs were formalized in a worldwide RFP process – and this is where Witco made the difference:
- A single interface to manage all the 57 buildings worldwide – with a strong ability to scale in use cases, locations, and integrations to be managed
- A modular approach and strong new feature development pipeline that allows the solution to adapt to evolving company needs over time
- A rich (and constantly evolving) marketplace of third party integrations – for instance they had 4 different suppliers for catering on-site, all integrated within Witco today
- A SaaS (“Software as a Service”) model that lowers maintenance and update costs
- A deep marketplace of third-party solutions
- A global and strong customer success and advisory team that can support project implementation and success worldwide
- The ability to address cybersecurity needs with dedicated server hosting and robust score on cybersecurity tests
- A strong enterprise track record that shows expertise in providing workplace experience management solutions
Main challenges for the implementation of the project:
- Delivery and complexity: there were numerous third-party solutions to integrate into Witco, on top of dozens of native features that were deployed differently considering the particular needs and setup of the various locations (language, servers, security compliance, etc.).
- Timing: sometimes the timeline was highly challenging. For instance, we had to be ready in less than 2 months to launch the app for their new office in Boston (Crossings, 65,000m2)
- Set up a consistent project governance across Sanofi, Wavestone (the change management consulting company) and Witco on all fronts (technical setup, implementation, testing, launch on different sites) and locations (taking into account the time difference and coordination from North America to Asia
A global roll-out strategy
Appÿ, the Sanofi workplace management app by Witco
For a smooth experience, Appÿ is connected to many external providers using SSO, the first of which being Microsoft 365 to synchronize users and rooms.
Hybrid work, made simple
Appÿ is the all-in-one application that accompanies Sanofi employees in their everyday life at work. Whether they are at the office, or working from home, it makes hybrid work feel like a breeze.
Employees can have an overview of a particular day, to make sure they didn’t forget to book their parking spot or order lunch for instance.
More specifically, here are the main features offered today:
- Declaring their presence (days at the office or working from home)
- Booking a workstation / meeting room next to their team or favorite colleague
- Booking a parking spot or a locker
- Ordering lunch and reloading their badge
- Accessing workplace events
They can also access to the floor plans and space occupancy in real time (thanks to sensors data), on big screens located next to strategic access points (eg: near the elevators).
It leverages Microsoft Azure Active Directory for SSO (“Single Sign On”), so that employees only have to authenticate once, then can access in a secure and seamless way the 15 native modules and 3 to 6 integrations within the application (exact figures may vary from one location to another).
They can do this at the 57 sites around the world where Appÿ is deployed according to their needs. This means that a Sanofi employee in Paris who travels to New York or Germany for business purposes will still be able to access the resources and services from the same app.
The result is a unified and global experience for both the employees and the facility management teams. Indeed, the latter can:
- Set up resources availability according to HR policy (i.e. manage their flex office and booking rules at a global scale)
- Have a unified view of space utilization and employee satisfaction in the workplace across all the 57 buildings
- Manage users and access across multiple sites
- Monitor the performance of service providers – catering, fitness, etc.
[.r-highlight-box][.r-highlight] Around 400 resources are booked on average per month and per location [.r-highlight-box][.r-highlight]
A digital and centralized access to hospitality at the office
With creating a culture of hospitality at the heart of Sanofi's workplace transformation, providing premium office services such as catering, concierge, and parking in a seamless and centralized manner was essential to ensure that employees felt empowered when they arrived at the workplace. That's why integrations with solutions such as Timechef (by Elior) or Everyday (by Sodexo) for corporate catering, Wayleadr or Luum for parking management, and Vecos for connected lockers, were important to provide Sanofi employees with a single and centralized access to premium workplace services.
Hospitality only makes sense if employees feel engaged while in the office. That's why, with the Appÿ’s interactive map, Sanofi’s employees can quickly locate buddies and book resources nearby, whether it's desks or meeting rooms for collaboration. Digital screens in the workspace also allow guests and employees to view the office map and see real-time updates of available, reserved, and occupied spaces.
On the other hand, Appÿ's information, event management and surveys modules allow internal communication teams to create a more social and connected workplace by engaging them on office life topics or simply sharing moments of celebration and team building.
[.r-highlight-box][.r-highlight] Each post published in the “information” module generates 100+ reactions on average * [.r-highlight][.r-highlight-box]
* = average number of reactions on the 3 last posts and on the 5 biggest launched sites when writing this article
A seamless and secure visitor management experience
To help Sanofi's front desk staff to welcome visitors in a seamless yet secure way, Witco, implemented a 360° visitor experience where they could:
- Allow visitors to reserve a parking space or locker at the workplace
- Invite visitors to the workplace via Outlook
- Provide managers with advanced visit data and analytics
- Manage visitor access rights
- Enable QR code check-in
- Invite visitors to sign digital documents
- Automatically print badges
- Define criteria that visitors must meet to come to the site
For some sites, the Witco native module is activated while for others, there is an integration with the external solution Proxyclick.
[.r-highlight-box][.r-highlight] Registered visitors can go up to 1000 per month on Sanofi’s busiest locations, making guest management a key component of their digital strategy [.r-highlight][.r-highlight-box]
A streamlined building management
The Appÿ application is intended to be the single point of access for all building stakeholders, from HR to facility managers, IT teams, and maintenance.
Thanks to an integrated ticketing system, occupants can, directly from the application, make a service request or declare a workspace issue (a broken light bulb, a screen that doesn't work, a water leak, etc.). These incident declarations and their exact location enable teams to intervene quickly, resolve the problem as soon as possible and keep employees informed.
QR codes are available in many places throughout the building, allowing a quick and easy reporting for users, yet leveraging the building referential so that facility managers can process and organise operations in the best way possible.
Depending on sites, this Help Desk module is either running independently (native Witco module) or integrated with dedicated ticketing solutions (such as Mission).
Interested in knowing more? Check out the Sanofi’s video below!
About Sanofi
Sanofi is a global healthcare company. Its team, across some 100 countries, is dedicated to transforming the practice of medicine by working to turn the impossible into the possible. They provide potentially life-changing treatment options and life-saving vaccine protection to millions of people globally, while putting sustainability and social responsibility at the center of their ambitions.
