September 13, 1999

PHH: Data As Business

By Beth Bacheldor

HH Vehicle Management Services, a subsidiary of Avis Rent A Car System Inc., is transforming its business model through IT. PHH still leases fleets of automobiles--some 700,000 cars--worldwide. But it's also leveraging a data warehouse, business-intelligence software, and Internet technologies to provide valuable data to its customers--and open new business opportunities.

"Not only are we offering our bread-and-butter services, now we're able to provide actionable information about those services to our clients," says Tim Talbot, VP of technology management at PHH, in Hunt Valley, Md.

Talbot and his team are spearheading several projects that put IT services directly in front of the leasing company's customers. For example, the IT staff oversees the delivery of business reports to PHH customers who can log on to a PHH Web site to review such data as driver information, fuel transactions, maintenance details, and billing information. One service uses Brio Technology Inc. reporting software to deliver data to customers who use PHH's private-label fuel and maintenance credit cards, such as the MasterCard Fleet T&E purchasing card.

The IT team has also developed query features using Allaire Corp.'s ColdFusion application development tools that let customers manipulate the data in the reports; for example, customers could look at all the transactions over the last month and then drill down to look at a specific driver's transactions. In November, the company will roll out PHH Platinum, a Web site where customers can define preferences and then have reports pushed to them when certain events occur, such as the day an employee bucks company policy and puts premium gas in the delivery truck's tank.

Talbot says PHH is weighing the prospect of turning these projects into revenue generators. "We're talking with other companies that might feed information to us that we put through our business-intelligence systems, then turn out reports for their clients," he says.

That puts new demands on PHH's IT team. "If you look at the internal transformation, it's as great or greater than the external changes," says Talbot. His team is working more closely with the business side, even going on sales calls. "Traditionally, in a sales call, technology would be discussed in the last 10 minutes," says Talbot. "Now it's being discussed in the first two hours."

Return to main story, "E-Transformation."

Illustration by Matsu

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