A strategic alliance to develop joint training and research activities in services marketing
In a highly tertiary economic context, services have become increasingly strategic to ensuring a company's growth and competitiveness. Staunch supporters of the "service culture", Accor Services subsidiary Academie Accor Services and the Grenoble Ecole de Management signed a partnership today that will take the form described below.
Three major avenues for cooperation:
Joint steering of a Specialized Master's program in "Service Activities Management"
This 6-year course approved by the Conférence des Grandes Ecoles will open in September 2007.
Taught part-time over 15 months at Grenoble, it intends to train:
- future managers of networked services companies;
- "Service-oriented" project managers of the industry or services.
In particular, for the Academie Accor Services the joint steering involves interventions before the students, participating in producing educational cases and taking part in the Specialized Master's Program Scientific Committee, as well as receiving the students. International implementations of this program are currently being finalized, for instance in Morocco.
Implementing intra-company training courses
The two partners have set up an in-company intervention methodology intended to develop professionalism and the "service" culture. This methodology has already been proven in companies working in many sectors (transport, distribution, luxury, automobiles, health).
Joint production of academic and applied research
With a shared vision of the current dynamics of service activities, the two partners wish to capitalize on their experience through a joint academic production: services marketing manual (2007), research articles, etc.
Develop new educational approaches
The Academie Accor Services today has the experience of successful missions before major players of the service world, both in France and abroad, and in sectors as varied as transports, banking, leisure, real estate and public services.
Its intervention modes are based on the Accor teams' 30 years' managerial practice in the service sector and teaching methods implemented since 1985 within the international network of the Accor Academies. Its core business is to accompany the development of service cultures within companies, through the application of teaching concepts and practices to facilitate behavioral changes in employees in contact with the customer.
Uniting for added value
By uniting with the Academie Accor Services, a shining reference in training and advice in services management, Grenoble Ecole de Management is pursuing its ambitious policy of development through strategic alliance in order to create training courses with a high added value, both as regards their contents and their form.
"This partnership strengthens the expertise in services management developed by the Ecole, both in the teaching of students and managers and in the applied research for major service companies", explains Thierry Grange, Grenoble Ecole de Management director.
This alliance is part of the framework for the establishment of the "Management & Dynamique des Services" Institute that unites all training and teaching activities of the Grenoble Ecole de Management in this field. The Academie Accor Services quite naturally holds a choice position in this project.
Grenoble Ecole de Management
Founded in 1984 by the Grenoble CCI, Grenoble Ecole de Management is an institution of higher learning in management, the quality of whose programs has received the triple EQUIS, AACSB and AMBA certification. Each year it turns out 2500 managers and students, in France and abroad. Ranked among the best management schools in Europe and one of the top ones in France, it has developed a leading expertise in technology management and innovation.
Academie® Accor Services
Enriched by the Accor group's 30 years of experience in the practice, observation and research in service trades, Academie Accor Services® counsels companies in three specific areas:
- Strategy and service marketing consulting
- Accompanying service-oriented company schools
- Development of service skills through training courses within and between companies (Les Itinéraires du Service® and tailored courses).