Avis 2015 Annual Report Download - page 15

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We continue to upgrade our technology, to make the reservation, pick-up and return process
more convenient and user-friendly, with a particular emphasis on enabling and simplifying our
customers’ online interactions with us.
We have significantly expanded our tracking of customer-satisfaction levels so that we now
receive location-specific feedback from more than 1 million customers annually, and we have
implemented numerous service and process changes in response to this feedback.
We expect to continue to invest in these efforts, with a particular emphasis on self-service technologies
that we believe will allow us to serve customers more effectively and efficiently.
•Controlling Costs and Driving Efficiency throughout the Organization. We have continued our efforts
to rigorously control costs. We continue to aggressively reduce expenses throughout our organization,
and we have consistently eliminated or reduced significant costs through the integration of acquired
businesses. In addition:
We continued to develop and implement our Performance Excellence process improvement
initiative to increase efficiencies, reduce operating costs and create sustainable cost savings
using LEAN, Six Sigma and other tools. This initiative, which we have expanded to cover our
operations in our International segment, has generated substantial savings since its
implementation and is expected to continue to provide incremental benefits.
Through our Transformation 2015 initiative, we have taken significant actions to further streamline
our administrative and shared-services infrastructure through a restructuring program that
identifies and replicates best practices, leverages the scale and capabilities of third-party service
providers, and will increase the global standardization and consolidation of non-rental-location
functions over time.
We have implemented initiatives to integrate our acquired businesses, to realize cost efficiencies
from combined maintenance, systems, technology and administrative infrastructure, as well as
fleet utilization benefits and savings by combining our car rental and car sharing fleets at times to
reduce the number of unutilized vehicles.
We have also continued to implement technology solutions, including self-service voice
reservation technology, mobile communications with customers and fleet optimization
technologies to reduce costs, and we will further continue to pursue innovative solutions to
support our strategic initiatives.
We believe such steps will continue to aid our financial performance.
In executing our strategy, we plan to continue to position our distinct and well-recognized global brands to focus
on different segments of customer demand, complemented by our other brands in their respective regional
markets. With Avis as a premium brand preferred more by corporate and upscale leisure travelers, Budget as a
mid-tier brand preferred more by value-conscious travelers, Payless as a deep-value brand, Maggiore and Apex
as well-recognized regional brands and Zipcar offering its members an economical alternative to car ownership,
we believe we are able to target a broad range of demand, particularly since the brands often share the same
operational and administrative infrastructure while providing differentiated though consistently high levels of
customer service.
We aim to provide vehicles, products, services and pricing, to use various marketing channels and to maintain
marketing affiliations and corporate account contracts that complement each brand’s positioning. We plan to
continue to invest in our brands through a variety of efforts, including television commercials, print advertisements
and on-line and off-line marketing. We see particular growth opportunities for our Budget brand in Europe, as
Budget’s share of airport car rentals is significantly smaller in Europe than in other parts of the world, and for
Zipcar internationally, where the brand’s proven car sharing model can be expanded into numerous geographic
markets.