The benefit, in brief
SNCF Réseau is launching a first Mendo POC across all departments and the entire national scope, moving from a traditional generative AI approach to a tooled, scalable rollout.
- Coverage across the entire national scope and all departments (industrial/operational roles and cross-functional teams)
- Relationship with Mendo initiated just over a year ago, at a conference in Paris
- AI adoption initiative launched in 2024
SNCF Réseau's context
Benoît Besson works at SNCF Réseau on Open Innovation: he supports the company by finding partners to help improve its performance. The connection with Mendo happened at a dedicated AI conference in Paris: « We instantly clicked since we're both working on AI adoption and the rollout of generative AI. »
Why Mendo: simplicity and integration
Faced with the growing number of generative AI solutions on the market, Benoît highlights the challenge large companies face when choosing:
There are many solutions out there, but above all there are many generative AI solutions. We have all these tools arriving from all sorts of different brands and it's complex for employees and for companies like ours to understand how it all works.
What made the difference with Mendo: the simplicity and the direct integration, particularly with Microsoft Copilot, a tool already in use at SNCF Réseau. « That engaging side, easy and effective, easy to get started with, very easy to roll out and manage. »
Before / after: from informal to tooled
Since 2024, SNCF Réseau had been guiding its employees on generative AI in a manual, meeting-by-meeting way, « doing it the old-fashioned way, with the care and craft of a true practitioner ». Faced with growing employee interest, the team wanted to scale up with a specialized tool: « We felt we needed a tool fit to bridge that gap. And we're hoping that with Mendo, we'll manage to reach the next level. »
| Before Mendo |
After Mendo |
| Manual guidance, meeting by meeting, since 2024 |
A dedicated, specialized tool to scale the approach |
| Events and workshops, one group at a time |
Entire national scope, all departments covered |
| Adoption dependent on individual craft and availability |
Integrated into the Office suite, fast adoption expected |
The decisive factor remains ease of deployment:
What convinced me to launch with Mendo is really how easy it is to use and deploy. It's already integrated into the Office suite [...] so I think the adoption of the tool will really be very fast.
A healthy competition among employees
Benoît anticipates a ripple effect through gamification: « I think it will add a bit of excitement to our employees' daily work [...] they'll be able to embrace this kind of healthy competition, which drives engagement and makes adoption much easier. »
A deliberately focused POC
The selected team primarily aims to ensure representativeness, with profiles distributed across the entire national scope and all business functions, « whether in very industrial, very operational roles, or in cross-functional management roles ». The goal: « for this tool to reflect the full range of what SNCF Réseau does. »
An accessible and demanding Mendo team
Benoît also praises Mendo's responsiveness and commitment to excellence throughout the launch:
The team is very accessible. If we have a question, they answer it. They push us on deadlines because sometimes we're the ones moving a bit slowly. So it's a really great team and we're thrilled.
Concrete benefits for SNCF Réseau
- Native integration with Microsoft Copilot and the Office suite, with no deployment friction
- Scaling up of a previously informal guidance approach
- Workforce representativeness through a panel covering the entire national scope
- Gamification fostering healthy competition among employees
- Responsiveness and high standards from the Mendo team on a daily basis
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