How Sonepar has harmonized their communication?

About Sonepar

Sonepar is an independent family-owned group and world leader in the distribution of electrical equipment, solutions and services for professionals. Present in 44 countries across 5 continents through 167 brands, the group relies on 44,500 employees to achieve a turnover of €21.6 billion (as of 31 December 2017).

By combining the density of its network with the development of digital solutions, Sonepar strengthens its client relationships every day. Its ambition: to become "The Reference" for all its partners.

Too many tools, not enough consistency

To maintain connections between its agencies spread across the world, Sonepar regularly organises internal events. Before Eventdrive, teams juggled a multitude of tools, at the cost of wasted time and consistency that was hard to maintain.

The group therefore turned to Eventdrive to centralise organisation, improve efficiency and offer employees a more interactive and engaging experience.

"What we love about Eventdrive is the close relationship we have with their team. The conversation is open to gather our wishes for improvements and optimisation. When relevant, their teams integrate them into the product development roadmap. Beyond all the features, that is also why Sonepar Group uses Eventdrive internationally."

Julien FrocourtCommunication Manager, Sonepar

How to make international events interactive while optimising their management and creation?

Driven by the desire to bring guests and organisers closer together in a smoother, simpler and more intuitive way, Sonepar adopted the Eventdrive platform in January 2018. Its main goal was to enable 200 to 300 people to interact at international events, even when they don't know each other.

Indeed, each participant comes from a different country and agency, which can make exchanges somewhat complex. The aim is therefore to engage them within the event and give them the floor so they can get to know one another better.

An all-in-one platform and an interactive mobile application

Eventdrive offered Sonepar a global platform to facilitate the flow of information to organisers and participants before, during and after the event. By allowing the team to centralise its communication — emails, website, forms — Eventdrive helped save time and energy.

Before each event, teams used to produce and print photo directories and agendas. Now, everything is centralised on a single, easy-to-use platform. Maximum flexibility, no more printing — and a small win for the planet along the way.

As platform usage grew increasingly frequent, Sonepar found itself facing a significant training need.

But that was before discovering Eventdrive's Customer Success team and the ease of getting to grips with the tool. As Julien Frocourt, Internal Communication Manager, puts it: staff are trained and up and running in 1h30.

The Eventdrive application also allows participants to exchange and take part in interactive activities through collaborative tools such as word clouds, votes and quizzes. Thanks to a dedicated news feed for the event, guests can share their experience by posting photos and testimonials under their name or anonymously, encouraging people to speak up and express themselves freely. Guests can also network by accessing each participant's profile.

A smooth and consistent event organisation process

These international events are a genuine strategic asset in Sonepar's internal communication. Using Eventdrive has allowed them to professionalise their approach and replicate it at a larger scale.

In total, since 2018, more than 3,000 employees have been exposed to the Eventdrive application through around thirty events organised with Eventdrive.

9 out of 10 people connect to the application: 1,000 participants and more than 200 photos posted over two days for the France convention. Finally, speaker presentations generate a high volume of reactions, with very lively Q&A sessions.