Tour de France: In Excel, we simply lost sight of the big picture.

Tour de France is one of the best-known and biggest annual sports events organized in Europe. The tour rides take place in other cities every day and that requires a lot of organization behind the scenes. A large team of volunteers is ready to help during the event. In 2017, Beeple facilitated the planning of the volunteers during the first tour ride, the so-called Grand Départ, for the first time in the German city Düsseldorf. This year, we are back in the game, for the Grand Départ in Brussels. A home game for Beeple!

At the organization of sports events, volunteers are often at the basis of a smooth proceeding of the event. No less than 3000 volunteers were deployed for the Grand Départ in Düsseldorf. Those people were all assigned different functions and had to work in different places at different times. Nadine Schönwald, Head of Digital Solutions at the Adecco Group, was responsible for creating the planning and therefore also for a smooth proceeding of the start of the Tour de France.

A tool to steer everything in the right direction was definitely necessary according to Nadine. “The management of a group this size isn’t an easy task and includes a great responsibility. Making sure that a group of 3000 volunteers knows what, where and when they have to do something and what they will need was manually impossible”

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Real time planning information any time, anywhere?

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Planning in Excel

First, Nadine tried to create the full planning in Excel, but that soon proved to be not the best solution. Luckily, she quickly discovered the possibilities of Beeple. “The overview we get in Beeple is a great advantage, especially when you have to schedule a lot of people for different projects in a few days. In Excel, we simply lost sight of the big picture in the different lists per function and location. At this rate, it would take too much time to for example look up a simple location.” Thanks to Beeple, Nadine could not only centralize all data, but also communicate automatically with the volunteers. “We saved a lot of time with every single communication. It was automatically done through email and text messages. Beeple notified all our volunteers automatically of the latest changes and information.”

Why replacing Excel by Beeple will save you a lot of time and error?

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“The overview we get in Beeple is a great advantage, especially when you have to schedule a lot of people for different projects in a few days.”

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Register clothing sizes

During the Tour de France, every volunteer gets a specific T-shirt for their function. That’s why it’s important to know the T-shirt size of every volunteer. With the profile properties in Beeple, Nadine could easily request this information in a few clicks. “Normally, we would have to contact every volunteer personally to ask for their T-shirt size. That would not only take a lot of time, but there would also be a chance of mistakes. Beeple enabled us to quickly see how many T-shirts we needed for each function and location and in which sizes. Furthermore, the profile properties can also be used as a filter . Like that, I easily found suitable candidates for a specific function.”

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Customized for the client

The Beeple tool is fully adaptable, from the company look and feel to tailor-made features, which is a real added value to Nadine. “We needed some planning features for the Tour de France project. The developers at Beeple were able to implement them in the tool for us. Wishes that aren’t standard included in the tool can thus be requested. For that reason, the tool is extremely flexible. Not only for sports events, but in my opinion for every kind of organization that has to schedule a lot of people.”

Next to a web application, Beeple also has a mobile application, that can be completely personalized as well. By means of the app, collaborators can check in and out on their working day and receive and hand in necessities. “Thanks to the mobile app, we can keep track of who is working where. That way, we can instantly take action when a team is understaffed or incomplete. It is now possible to follow up our Tour de France project in real-time.”

Brussels Grand Départ 2019



In 2019, the Grand Départ will take place in our own capital. Nathalie Apers, Digital Adecco Beeple Co-ordinator at Adecco België, is responsible for the planning of the volunteers and temps that will guide the visitors. “The Grand Départ will attract thousands of visitors. To welcome those hordes of supporters, we need hospitable, cheerful and enthusiastic volunteers. Their most important task will be to welcome and help the crowd and to inform them about mobility. They will be the first contact person of the spectators upon their arrival at the airport, motorway stations and car parks.”

The collaborators can decide in advance for which functions and shifts they want to register. Early June, Nathalie published the jobs in Beeple, after which the volunteers and temps could immediately enrol themselves. “At the moment, there are more than 1500 enrolled collaborators. With a last campaign, that is currently run on social media, there will be over 2000 enrolments. During the event, the admins will check the collaborators in by means of the QR code on the smartphone or info sheet.”

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