Strategic integration: 1 July.

Next month will see three leading names in the rewards, employee benefits and motivation sector – Accor Services, Capital Incentives & Motivation and Motivano – to completing a two-year strategic integration, when they come together as one company – Edenred - from 1 July.

Accor Services, which acquired Capital Incentives in 2004 and a majority share in Motivano in 2007, is de-merging from the Accor Hotels hospitality group and will list its shares separately on the French stock market.

‘This is a great opportunity for us to complete our integration and offer one single and strong brand to the UK market,’ managing director of Accor Services (UK), Patrick Langlois tells ModernSelling.com.

Pre-paid services

Globally, Edenred will be the leader in so-called ‘pre-paid services’ with a presence in 40 countries, serving 500,000 corporate customers, a network of 1.2 million merchants, and 33 million end-users.

In the UK, the newly merged company will help organisations ‘engage and motivate people to achieve enhanced performance’. It claims to bring together the widest range of rewards and employee benefits solutions available in the market as a single integrated solution, or as individual products that meet a specific need or requirement.

Flexible and voluntary benefits, employee savings, salary sacrifice schemes such as Childcare Vouchers, the Compliments reward brand offering multi-retail cards, experiences, travel and the UK’s first ethical integrated incentive programme, expense management services, and a communications service developed to maximise returns on investment from any scheme, will all remain within Edenred’s solution portfolio.

Patrick Langlois: strong UK brand.

Technological expertise

‘Our technological expertise gives us an unrivalled ability to deliver solutions through paper, card and online platforms. This, combined with the knowledge and expertise of our people and adherence to the highest quality standards, enables us to respond to the needs and requirements of our clients with greater relevance, increased speed and a real commitment to collaboration and innovation,’ Langlois says.

He adds: ‘The three entities already have centralised IT Information technology), HR (human resources), marketing and operations teams, and our Employee Benefits and Incentive and Motivation sales teams are operating across all products and services, so coming together as one is the final logical step to our ongoing planned development. The establishment of Edenred globally really has provided the ideal time to come under one name in the UK and give us a unique position in the market.’

Experience

Langlois concludes: ‘We have more than 80 years’ combined experience between the three businesses and tens-of-thousands of people benefit from our products and services every day. Edenred symbolises the next chapter for rewards, benefits and motivation and will become the thought-leader and facilitator of next-practice in this space. This is more than a new name and logo, and the merger of three companies: it’s the beginning of a new chapter for the rewards, benefits and motivation markets.’

In the UK, the company has 260 employees, 15,000 private and public sector clients, 750,000 users and 50,000 and achieved £320 million in issued volume In 2009. Internationally, Edenred operates in 40 countries, with 6,000 employees, nearly 500,000 private and public sector customers, 33 million users and 1.2 million affiliates, generating total issue volume of €12.4 billion in 2009, of which more than 50% was in emerging markets.

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