Oracle Customer Case Study
Avis Budget Group, Inc. Improves Customer
Experience with Service-Oriented Architecture

“E-Receipts, built on Oracle WebLogic Server, has exceeded our

expectations. It’s a tangible example of the transformative
influence of SOA. In the past, making a core business process,
Avis Budget Group, Inc.
Parsippany, NJ
like rental returns, a paperless process would have been
www.avisbudgetgroup.com
impossible.” – John Turato, Vice President of Technology, Avis
Industry:
Budget Group, Inc.
Travel & Transportation

Avis Budget Group, Inc. is one of the world leaders in vehicle
Annual Revenue:
rental services, reflecting the company’s commitment to service,
US$6 billion
innovation, and professionalism. That commitment could just as
Employees:
accurately apply to the company’s technology team as to its
30,000
thousands of rental agents.
Oracle Products & Services:
To help ensure a positive and consistent customer experience and
Oracle WebLogic Server
keep loyal renters coming back time and again, while at the same
Oracle Coherence
time lowering IT costs, Avis Budget’s technology team began
updating its technology infrastructure in 2002.
Key Benefits:
Integrated with travel Web sites
First, the company tackled the challenge of supporting internet
to provide users with more ways
shopping for rental services by creating a set of applications
to shop for car rental services
called DirectConnect that integrates with travel sites using
Created a paperless process
OpenTravel Extensible Markup Language (XML) messages, all
for rental returns, delivering
built on Oracle’s WebLogic Server (previously known as BEA
greater customer convenience

WebLogic Server) and Oracle Coherence. This service planted the
Accelerated time to market

seed for Avis’ move to a service-oriented architecture (SOA).
Increased flexibility and
responsiveness
Then in 2004, Avis extended the SOA infrastructure to support all
Enabled Avis to expand
customer contact channels—including call centers, airport rental
marketing initiatives
counters, standalone facilities, and the internet. The new
Gained the ability to easily
infrastructure, known as One Merged Enterprise & Global
process more than 60,000
Architecture (OMEGA), is also built on Oracle WebLogic Server.
transactions per day
Today, the OMEGA foundation enables Avis to seamlessly

process more than 60,000 transactions daily.
Avis has rolled out a number of applications on OMEGA,
beginning with the rental return process, and is currently
developing more.
“Although our business seems simple, there are a lot of variables
in the rental experience and many opportunities to differentiate
our brands,” said John Turato, vice president of technology at
Avis Budget Group. “Our investment in SOA, OMEGA, and the
Copyright © 2009, Oracle. All rights reserved.
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Published August 2009

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Oracle Customer Case Study

applications that run on top of it, is intended to enhance our strong
competitive position. We want a flexible business platform that

enables us to turn innovative ideas into reality quickly and

reliably.”

Tackling a Growing Online Business
DirectConnect, which was the genesis of OMEGA, enables
customers to easily browse Avis inventory via various travel Web
sites. It not only benefits the customers but also allows Avis to
control costs and better understand its partners and how they are
doing business. DirectConnect delivers on Avis’ need for a cost-
effective solution that enables modern travel distribution via the
internet.
Internet shopping causes a heavy load on many backend travel
distribution systems and increases mainframe usage costs. When
looking for the best deal, travel shoppers visit as many as eight
different types of travel Web sites and other channels, including:
online travel agent Web sites, aggregators, supplier Web sites,
last-minute deal Web sites, auction Web sites, consolidators,
supplier call centers, and traditional travel agents.
To solve this problem, Avis enlisted the help of Oracle Coherence
to realize 32% savings in mainframe usage costs and a 98% cache
hit rate. Coherence serves 20% of the 26 million requests that
DirectConnect receives per month, providing scalability and
reliability to help improve the service levels significantly. Overall,
the use of Oracle Coherence has saved Avis $300,000 per year.
Oracle Coherence reads pricing data from the mainframe and
makes it available for the DirectConnect channel. Each location
refreshes and caches pricing information each morning. Once the
data is in cache, Avis can run reports against it to better
understand their partners and how they are doing business.
Eliminating Paper and Improving Service
After the success of DirectConnect, Avis extended its SOA to
other business processes with the OMEGA system. Among the
next business processes that Avis addressed was the rental return
process. Avis Budget Car Rental Group wanted to help provide
renters with the documents they need for completing their expense
reports without having to worry about losing printed slips of
paper. This led to the creation of E-Receipts. The application
Copyright © 2009, Oracle. All rights reserved.
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Published August 2009

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Oracle Customer Case Study
“E-Receipts is having
enables customers to drop off their vehicles at any participating
a positive effect on
Avis or Budget location, and, after checking in with the return
customer perception
agent and getting an instant paper receipt, they can walk away
of Avis and Budget.
without having to worry about paperwork. In addition, customers
When people find out
receive an electronic receipt that the system generates
that I work for Avis,
automatically and e-mails to the customer after a rental agent
they invariably
checks in the vehicle. Customers have the option to receive their
mention how much
e-mail receipts as simple HTML messages or as PDF documents.
they like E-Receipts.
Travelers receive their electronic receipts within seconds of when
They appreciate the
representatives check-in their vehicles. Often, the e-mail receipts
convenience of the
arrive before the renters have even boarded a shuttle bus to the
service. It makes
airport terminal. The popularity of the service is growing rapidly
their travel
and the system handles more than 70,000 transactions in a typical
experience much less
day.
stressful. That’s a
great way to build
Built on Oracle WebLogic Server, E-Receipts integrates with the
customer loyalty.”
company’s billing system, which resides on an IBM mainframe.
John Turato
Building Customer Loyalty
Vice President
“E-Receipts is having a positive effect on customer perception of
Avis Budget Group, Inc.
Avis and Budget,” Turato explained. “When people find out that I
work for Avis, they invariably mention how much they like E-
Receipts. They appreciate the convenience of the service. It makes
their travel experience much less stressful. That’s a great way to
build customer loyalty.”
“E-Receipts is more than just a way to enhance customer
satisfaction. It is helping us to achieve a strategic objective—
expanding our database of customer e-mail addresses,” Turato
said. “This can help us execute numerous marketing and service
initiatives that wouldn’t be feasible or cost-effective otherwise.
That’s the power of SOA.”
“E-Receipts, built on Oracle WebLogic Server, has exceeded our
expectations,” Turato said. “It’s a tangible example of the
transformative influence of SOA. In the past, making a core
business process—like rental returns—paperless would have been
impossible. Now, it’s a reality.”
Turato also noted the operational cost savings that SOA is
delivering. When the organization deploys new applications in
non-mainframe environments, it can bring them to market faster.
It is easier for Avis to manage and modify the applications, and
the company can standardize and streamline integration.
Copyright © 2009, Oracle. All rights reserved.
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Published August 2009

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Oracle Customer Case Study

“E-Receipts is a great example of OMEGA’s value,” said Ashok
Kumar, director of services architecture at Avis Budget Group,

Inc. “We were able to roll out a new application quickly and

easily. We didn’t have to perform major surgery on our

infrastructure, and we were able to deliver a solution that has a
positive impact on customer perception of our brands.”
Avis Budget Group stores E-Receipts on a cluster of Sun Fire
V480 servers running the Sun Solaris 9.0 operating system. The
data schema for E-Receipts is XML.
Building on Success
The IT group is now leveraging the notification service created
for E-Receipts on other projects. For example, drivers who need
rental cars while their personal cars are being repaired can often
have their insurance companies pay for the rental cars. Avis uses
the notification service to communicate with insurance carriers
and drivers about payment authorization.
“The enhanced consumer perception created by the successful
implementation of E-Receipts has allowed us to undertake new
SOA initiatives that are having positive business impacts,” Kumar
said. “We are now in the process of expanding our SOA
capabilities. As we have one success after another with OMEGA-
based applications, the company’s confidence in SOA is growing.
Lines of business are bringing innovative ideas to us and asking
us to implement them on OMEGA. That’s quite a departure from
years past.”
Reusing Data
“Reuse is one of the most compelling benefits of SOA,” said
Turato. “Reusing proven software components can accelerate
project timelines, reduce costs, and improve outcomes. The
combination of the Oracle WebLogic standards-based platform
and a SOA-design approach makes reuse simple. It’s one of the
reasons we feel that Oracle WebLogic is an ideal fit for our
business.”
Why Oracle?
A SOA built on Oracle WebLogic infrastructure software enables
the company to bring innovative services to market faster,
increase flexibility and responsiveness, and expand marketing
initiatives.
Copyright © 2009, Oracle. All rights reserved.
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Published August 2009

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Oracle Customer Case Study

Turato also mentioned the scalability and reliability of Oracle
WebLogic Server, and Oracle’s expertise in SOA as reasons why

Oracle WebLogic Server suits Avis Budget Group, Inc. so well.

“We have embraced SOA as the strategic direction of our

infrastructure, and the comprehensive Oracle WebLogic product

set and best-of-breed SOA capabilities are consistent with our IT
vision,” Turato said.



Avis Budget Group, Inc. is a leading provider of vehicle rental services, with

operations in more than 70 countries. Through its Avis and Budget brands, the

company is the largest general-use vehicle rental company in North America,
Australia, New Zealand, and other regions.
Copyright © 2009, Oracle. All rights reserved.
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Published August 2009

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Document Outline

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