RYDER ASSISTS FILA IN OUT-RUNNING THE COMPETITION

SECURITY WITH ADT EQUALS REVOLUTIONARY SERVICE

CREATIVE SOURCING

WEB ADDRESSES

OUTSOURCING HOME

With Alamo Rent-A-Car about to spin off from its parent company and trade publicly on its own, the leisure-travel-oriented company planned ahead to make some innovative, shareholder value-building moves. 

 

So it turned to outsourcing and to Pitney Bowes Management Services (PBMS) and the PBMS Document Solutions Group to help design a re-engineering of Alamo's travel-agent-voucher processing system. The move has resulted in improved communications, increased responsiveness and generally heightened productivity for the company and individual consumer, but more specifically, for the tour operator or wholesale segment of its client base. Additionally, the company predicts the system will garner significant cost savings annually.

The solution, developed with PBMS' technology partner IDP Companies, Inc., an electronic information firm, includes scanning all travel vouchers and posting the images to a secure Web site for viewing.

Radical Improvement for Customers

"The end-to-end process involvement has improved radically for the customer," confirms Michael Going, vice-president, worldwide sales, at the Ft. Lauderdale, Florida-based car rental firm. "The old system was manual and labor-intensive. This system gave us process improvements, strategic advantage and service improvements, as well as a foundation to build on for additional Web-based projects," he adds.

As for innovation, Going says Alamo is the first in the car-rental industry to develop a Web-based system to manage travel vouchers. This not only gives Alamo a leg up on the competition, it provides better service to customers. "We believe it creates a competitive advantage for us in the market -- it is a unique product. We also think it is a very scalable foundation -- it won't be the last place we use this technology," he says.

Like most companies, the constant pressure to improve business practices challenged Alamo and ultimately became the driver to outsourcing the system development to PBMS. Alamo needed to reduce cycle time, increase customer responsiveness and get the most out of document information. Michael Going, Vice-President,  Alamo

Driving Improvements

Like most companies, the constant pressure to improve business processes challenged Alamo and ultimately became the driver to outsourcing the system development to PBMS. Alamo needed to reduce cycle time, increase customer responsiveness and get the most out of document information. 

 

The previous voucher system was an important but heavily paper-based process. Historically, the customer arrived with a bunch of paper vouchers that the rental agents had to interpret, and then the vouchers flowed manually through an administrative process. 

Now the voucher system is a simple process for customers. Tour operators issue vouchers to customers for prepaid or car rental services. The customer uses the voucher for a rental car through Alamo and then Alamo attaches the voucher to the tour operator's bill.

With the new Pitney Bowes imaging solution, these travel vouchers -- approximately 9,000 daily -- are scanned as they are received. The images are stored electronically for viewing using a common desktop browser. Since all vouchers are now documented electronically, this new process reduces the expense of lost and contested vouchers.

"There are productivity gains all along the way," says Going.

A Relationship of Trust

Going also says that the relationship between Alamo and PBMS is based on trust. 

 

"The vouchers come from some of our biggest and best accounts. This is a stronghold market for Alamo, and we are dealing with important financial data. PBMS has demonstrated a competency, confidentiality and trust that have formed the foundation of our working relationship," he says.  The two firms also share a similar work ethic. "They projected a very aggressive timetable and met it bringing the system to market," he adds. 

 

Process improvements,  strategic advantage, and ultimately increased shareholder value are all benefits of this innovative service developed by PBMS specifically for Alamoís needs. "This is the kind of thing we need to do," says Going. "Lock in outsourcing where it makes sense and ultimately improve margins," he concludes.