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Mittu Sridhara (MS): Although Avis Europe and Cendant [which runs Avis Americas and Australasia] are separate entities with no cross-shareholdings, we need to co-operate closely to provide seamless services and a global brand worldwide. In effect, we need to operate as one team. Since our March 2003 acquisition of Budget, this has become even more important.

IA: So how do the two entities share information in order to operate globally as one team?

MS: The two organisations share a mainframe-based platform, Wizard, which handles online reservation information and also enables us to track inventory, which in our case is a network of 700,000 vehicles. Using Wizard, we are already able to operate in near-real time - when a reservation is made on a web site or through an agent for a car to be rented from a specific location, that location knows within minutes.

IA: Mainframes are not always associated with real-time business processes? Is this a new implementation?

MS: Not at all - it dates back to the early 1970s, but the current version was introduced in 1985. Our systems prove that you don't always need the newest technology to operate in real-time! I think it's fair to say that Avis is not a big fan of client/server systems. We skipped that generation almost untouched. But we find that, even though it might be termed a 'legacy' system, it gives us all the benefits that Internet systems give us today. It is based in a single location, which makes it easier to maintain and develop. It gives us a single view of the customer. Because our operations are spread all over the world, we could never have afforded to put fat PCs on a massive global network, and this kind of system would have been pretty hard to keep secure.

IA: So what improvements does Avis Europe need to build?

MS: Wizard provides us with consistent data definitions but we still require a way of automating business processes in surrounding areas, and in particular, finance. We think the best way to achieve close integration of our business processes is by standardising on a single stack of enterprise applications from a single vendor. This is why Avis Europe recently invested in applications from PeopleSoft. We are planning to wrap PeopleSoft applications around Wizard, to support self-service for customers and employees as far as possible, and to only customise these applications where necessary.

IA: How do you intend to deploy the PeopleSoft applications?

MS: We have made the decision to do this in an incremental and business process-oriented way. So we have bought the entire suite of PeopleSoft applications, but will pick one process to start with and only implement the modules that directly support that process. Then, we move on to the next process. In this way, we will be able to build a system that directly reflects how we do business at Avis Europe.

IA: What are your goals for more real-time operations?

MS: We would like to collaborate more closely with our partners, especially on the supply side. We believe this would enable us to get the maximum possible utilisation of our chief asset - our vehicles. For example, we work with logistics providers who move our cars around between our offices and we also use many repair shops for maintenance and damage to vehicles. If we can let them know quicker what services we require from them, more of our vehicles will be on the road more of the time.

IA: How do you plan to measure your real-time IT environment?

MS: By keeping each system in one place! We have a single iteration of Wizard in Denver, and we are in the process of using a shared services model for all our applications. So many need to be consolidated onto a single host - our customer support application, for example, is currently based in France. The PeopleSoft applications will also run in a single location for the whole of Avis Europe. It is my belief that IT lends true competitive advantage to a business, but only when you make it as easy as possible to own and manage.