Jeff Clarke Explains Travelport’s Cost Cutting Initiative
In a recent interview with Travel Management, Travelport and Orbitz CEO Jeff Clarke explained Travelports $75 million cost-cutting initiative. Jeff Clarke wanted to reassure customers that Travelport is not taking away resources from its customers or technology.
“There is not a customer out there that is not looking to constantly reengineer the organization and optimize their cost structure,” Jeff Clarke said. “Given the scale of our firm, where we have over $1 billion a year in operating expenses, a $75 million cut is a relatively modest cut.” Jeff Clarke put things in perspective as he pointed out the 20 acquisitions Travelport had made over the past four years. “We are just now shifting the focus toward intense integration and execution,” said Jeff Clarke.
Jeff Clarke intends to do away with duplication and inefficient procedures within the company. “We strongly believe that if a department is doing ten things, most likely those things are too diffused to be successful in all of them. So we have asked each of our departments to prioritize everything they do in a forced rank, and we have asked people to redeploy, in a Darwinian way, their activities toward the most important areas,” Jeff Clarke pointed out.
Jeff Clarke was quick to point out that he has no intention of driving his employees harder. “It’s a reprioritization. We had been working on over 250 enhancements to Galileo. Many of those were pet projects and had multiple-quarter deliverables. Most of them looked like good things to do on paper, but no organization can operate on 250 items at the same time.” Jeff Clarke explained what is real motivation behind the cost cutting. “By reprioritizing, we believe we can do fewer, more strategic things and save money at the same time,” Jeff Clark said.
