McCue Interview: Martin Frick, CIO, Avis Europe

"Oh boy, welcome to the tornado."

This is how Martin Frick describes his initiation into the world of retail when he joined car rental firm Avis Europe.

Coming from a financial services background, Frick joined Avis Europe as CIO in May 2007 with the task of turning round an underperforming IT department in an industry that was facing some tough challenges.

"You go from insurance which is a very long-lasting business to a very short-paced business like car rental where on a weekly basis we are monitoring to see what is happening in the markets and what actions we need to take. But there is a lot financial services can learn from retail in terms of managing budgets tightly," he says.

That's where Frick came in. "The main initial focus was to stabilise IT, bring in more execution maturity and regroup IT after a few years of sub-standard delivery performance," he explains. "We introduced governance processes into this retail environment as you would find them in financial services, which has a higher maturity of running an IT organisation."

Avis Europe, headquartered in the UK, is a franchisee of the US-based Avis Budget Group (ABG). The European franchisee is responsible for business in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia while ABG covers the Americas and Australia.

Underpinning the global Avis company and franchisee countries is a core legacy system called the Wizard, whose innermost modules were built in the 1970s when computer processing for the car rental business was a huge step forward.

The Wizard is responsible for much of the retail process on a global basis, such as taking reservations, executing rentals and invoicing the customer. "If you are in Turkey, call a local call centre and want to rent a car in the US to drive it from there to Mexico, you can do it. It is all processed in one central core system," says Frick.

If you are in Turkey, call a local call centre and want to rent a car in the US to drive it from there to Mexico, you can do it. It is all processed in one central core system.

ABG is responsible for the Wizard, with its data centre operation outsourced to IBM and its maintenance outsourced to India's Tata Consultancy Services. ABG provides an application service provider (ASP) service to Avis Europe to share the cost of running the system as part of an arm's length relationship.

However the supply chain management - having the right cars in the right place at the right time and the right price - and the fleet and revenue management are all handled locally by Avis Europe.

In terms of IT, Avis Europe operates shared service centres in Bracknell and in Budapest as well as IT departments in local markets. Its IT staff totals around 300 people, plus another 150 or so who work for ABG in the US.

In-car technology is increasingly important in the car industry. Avis Europe works with French company Eileo on a clever RFID-enabled automated key system, which uses GPRS and GPS functionality to underpin its Okigo car-sharing service for customers in France.

Interview continues on page 2