How Aéroports de Paris is digitalising its customer experience

How does a company with revenue of nearly 5 billion go about developing a new business? It hires an entrepreneur!

Aéroports de Paris sees more than 100M passengers pass through every year. To develop its online sales of parking spaces, ADP hired Benaissa Embarech in 2010.

When he arrived, Benaissa was dropped into an environment where “online sales don’t come naturally at all and the digital systems simply aren’t in place”.

But faced with growing competition for getting to the airports, notably from ride-hailing services, shuttles and car-sharing, the conclusion is simple: “We won’t be in the market any more if we don’t evolve”.

Solutions have to be developed to cope: to stay competitive and relevant for the customer. That means adapting the offer: lowering the prices of ADP’s car parks and improving the service.

Benaissa tells us how he brought in this “new line of business” and transformed ADP.

He started with a small budget and negotiated 40 parking spaces to test his project. He rationalised the customer database. He contacted customers by email to develop the offer and an availability management system. Then he set up a real customer service.

During his adventure, Benaissa also had to prove himself, because ADP is driven by operational excellence and the organisation is already well oiled. Many were reluctant to get involved in the project for fear that the ADP machine would seize up and that it would “cannibalise” its business.

“Sometimes you feel a bit alone, like an entrepreneur”

Benaissa had to “evangelise” to reform and bring the teams on board with his project: spending time in the field to understand, then explaining patiently. “You have to explain things to people simply and with humility”.

Between entrepreneurship and diplomacy, Benaissa Embarech is on every front.

Find the full story told by its main protagonist.