An Innovation Challenge to Further Support Small & Medium Enterprises
While we celebrated World SME Day on June 27th, Small & Medium Enterprises need more help than ever, after being hardly hit by the Covid-19 crisis. At Sodexo Benefits and Rewards Services, we are playing our part to support SMEs, and in particular merchants who are important and valuable partners. This includes local shops, grocery stores, cafés and restaurants where Sodexo cardholders can purchase meals, food and other goods.
As the global leader in Quality of Life Services, Sodexo is committed to having a positive impact on communities, individuals and the environment. As part of our Better Tomorrow 2025 engagements, we strive to promote local development. 10 billion euro of our business value will benefit SMEs by 2025. In 2020 alone, 4.4 billion euro of our business value went to SMEs.
In addition, across the world, our teams have been mobilizing to help SMEs face the pandemic, recover and thrive, true to our responsibility and solidarity values. In India, Sodexo Benefits and Rewards Services worked with merchants to allow them to use QR code payment and provided loans to some of them in urgent need of financing. In Belgium, we designed a campaign called “Spend local” promoting local businesses while supporting food banks, through a donation made for each purchase in local shops. And in Czech Republic, we launched a communication campaign named “Let’s Eat” to encourage consumers to visit local restaurants as they reopened.
These are just a few examples of how we are supporting SMEs and acting as a trusted partner. We also provide training and customized advice in many countries. To go even further, we recently decided to launch a global Innovation Challenge across our organization to collect the very best innovative ideas and initiatives to drive revenues and attract news clients for local businesses.
Aurélien Sonet, Sodexo Benefits and Rewards Services CEO, explains: “Building and sustaining a trustful and beneficial relationship with our merchants is one of our key priorities. Accelerated digitalization, new consumer expectations, the pandemic… these are only a few of the profound transformations impacting merchants, which we want to help them navigate.”
The Innovation Challenge was kicked-off in May 2021 and open to all employees, whatever their function or role, in all countries where we operate, because good ideas can come from everywhere. We believe everyone can play a part in supporting local businesses!
The challenge raised 67 ideas and initiatives from 20 countries. This includes very diverse projects, with proposed approaches to increase the visibility of merchants, others to develop new payment solutions and initiatives to help SMEs grow or improve their supplies.
After the collection phase, all employees were invited to select the 10 best ideas and initiatives, through an online vote balanced with jury member appreciations. The jury convened to judge the initiatives was composed of both internal and external experts, including an SME representative and a groundbreaking entrepreneur, to represent a diversity of perspectives and ensure the relevance of solutions put forward for SMEs.
Here are the 6 members of our jury of choice:
- Florin Jianu, President, Romanian National Council of SMEs
- Jean Moreau, Co-founder & CEO, Phenix
- Aurélien Sonet, Global CEO, Sodexo Benefits and Rewards Services
- Maria Outters, Group SVP, Corporate Responsibility, Sodexo
- Sven Marinus, CEO, Sodexo Benefits and Rewards Services Belgium & Luxembourg
- Eda Uluca, CEO, Sodexo Benefits and Rewards Services Turkey
Submitters of the top 10 ideas had the opportunity to pitch to the jury on June 24th and share how their idea can make a real difference. Following these pitches, the winners of the Innovation Challenge were revealed on June 30th. These ideas and initiatives will help us drive further positive impact for local businesses, with new and innovative approaches and solutions!
Stay tuned to learn more!
