DIVERSIFICATION OF LEISURE ACTIVITIES AND IDENTIFICATION OF GROWTH DRIVERS

For 30 years, the European leader in leisure activities has been operating the largest French alpine ski resorts and leisure parks in Europe.

In 2002, the company chose to diversify into leisure parks in order to find new sources of growth and to reduce its dependence on a mature sector that is vulnerable to the impact of global warming, which is gradually reducing the duration of snow cover.

It operates more than 30 sites with very different management cultures. This makes it particularly difficult to consolidate and therefore to take decisions, especially in time of crisis.

The ambition of the Harmonie project is to homogenize practices, set up common references and deploy a new economic model. These objectives are also part of an approach to accelerate and secure budgetary and financial processes.

The Harmonie project, which began in 2012 with a needs expression and solution selection phase, aims to deploy the Talentia and Kimoce solutions, covering the areas of Finance, Purchasing and Inventory Management within leisure parks and ski areas.

Abington's support

By 2016, the project had put a lot of pressure on internal teams who were struggling to reconcile needs with the actual feasibility of solutions and who also had to resolve many instabilities. The internal Project Director refused to continue the project in a deadlocked situation. The company's General Management entrusted Abington with the Project Management in order to resolve the situation and bring the project to a sucessful conclusion.

First, Abington identified the main objectives with the DS CODIR (DG of DS) and redefined the project priorities. According to these priorities, Abington endeavored to stabilize the key functions before validating the standard model for the ski areas in an operational framework.

Validation via a Pilot Ski Area allowed to consolidate and initiate the deployment with the approval of the CODIR DS. This stage of the project was critical and fundamental. It paved the way for the deployment of the solution to finally accelerate the project and deploy within a reasonable time frame in all the DS.

The acceleration of the schedule imposed a very sustained pace for all internal and external stakeholders. Abington endeavored to implement a strict methodology for project deployment, and a close monitoring involving the DS CODIR to ensure that the milestones were met. The DS project team had a good knowledge of the company's practices and the Talentia/Kimoce tool, however the team needed to be supervised and steered in order to focus on the right priorities, while respecting the methodology and functional scope.

All DS sites did not have the same level of maturity, some were already using a purchase-inventory management solution that was integrated, while others were not. The road ahead was therefore uneven, requiring the project team to adapt the approach to enable all sites to accompany the change and reach the same end point.

The relationship with and between the editors Talentia and Kimoce was complex, and getting it under control and coordinating it more effectively was also one of Abington's answers.

Abington led the internal project team of 6 employees who were responsible for deploying the solution across all the Ski Areas (more than 100 key users mobilized on the different sites and more than 1,000 end users involved).

The deployment was successfully completed in 18 months, meeting CDA's expectations and fulfilling Abington's ambitious commitments.