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Gfi receive the Afaq Innovative Company label from Afnor
June 2020 by Marc Jacob
Innovation is a key concern in the reflections and activities of all companies, and forms part of the Gfi Group’s DNA. Over the past few years, the Group has developed both a culture and a range of services and solutions in the field of innovation. Today, the attribution of the Expert level of the Afaq Entreprise Innovante (Innovative Company) label by Afnor recognises and rewards Gfi’s Innovation approach, which is a pillar of its corporate culture.
In France, in partnership with Afnor, Gfi has undertaken a complete evaluation of its innovation approach and practices. Thanks to the label from the French national organisation for standardisation, the IT services company can now communicate its level of maturity in innovation to all its clients and partners. The Group has been evaluated at Expert level (maturity level 4/5) according to a co-constructed evaluation framework, inspired by standards-based approaches such as ISO 56002 (Innovation Management System).
The Innovative Company evaluation has highlighted several characteristics specific to the Gfi Group such as the existence of a network of FabLabs, dedicated to co-innovation with clients and partners, the place of innovation in the Group’s strategy as a real lever for differentiation and transformation along with the excellent appropriation of innovation by the management, and the strong commitment to acculturate the Group’s employees.
Innovation at Gfi
The Gfi group invests heavily in innovation to enable its clients to project themselves and to experience the latest technological advances on a wide variety of topics such as smart agents with its BotFoundry solution, social robotics, virtual and augmented reality, and computer vision. This investment guides the daily support of its clients, helping them in their transformation so that they can respond to their business challenges.
Innovation is also cultivated internally. For example, in December 2019 the IT services company launched “Do You Speak AI?”, an international initiative via its My University Gfi training platform. This internal challenge, allowing the three winners to spend two days immersed in a FabLab, was open to all employees of the Gfi group, i.e. more than 20,000 people in 22 countries at the time.
