Elior Group, a world leader in contract catering and multiservices with operations in eleven countries, has partnered with IBM France to establish an 'Agentic AI & Data Factory' aimed at accelerating the company's digital transformation and operational performance.
The collaboration, announced on July 10, 2025, will leverage IBM's comprehensive services portfolio and deep expertise in data and artificial intelligence to deploy advanced AI agents capable of autonomously processing and analyzing large quantities of data across Elior's global operations.
At the core of this partnership is the creation of a centralized platform designed to manage and orchestrate AI agents deployed throughout Elior's international operations and various business units. The platform is engineered to be flexible and scalable, adapting to the specific needs of each entity while integrating seamlessly with existing systems.
"By collaborating with IBM, we are reaching a new milestone in our digital transformation," said Boris Derichebourg, President of Elior and Derichebourg Multiservices. "This effort will enable us to take full advantage of the power of data and artificial intelligence to improve our operational performance and offer our customers ever more innovative and personalized services."
The partnership demonstrates how agentic AI—autonomous systems capable of planning, reasoning, and acting with minimal human oversight—is moving from experimental to practical business applications. Unlike traditional AI systems that require constant human direction, agentic AI can independently analyze challenges, develop strategies, and execute tasks.
"Agentic AI can help accelerate business execution by intelligently orchestrating actions and making faster, more informed decisions," noted Alex Bauer, General Manager of IBM Consulting France. "IBM is proud to support Elior in meeting its transformation goals through the expertise of our people and our solutions."
Beyond technology implementation, IBM will actively support Elior's data governance framework and implement a comprehensive change management strategy to ensure successful adoption by Elior's internal teams. This strategic alliance ultimately aims to strengthen Elior's leadership position in the foodservice and related services market, which generated €6.053 billion in revenue for fiscal 2023-2024 while serving 3.2 million people daily across 20,200 restaurants and points of sale.