Starting a business meant getting involved in all sorts of areas in the early days, however my main focus was always on getting the commercial and supply elements working in harmony.

Getting the mechanics and balance of these two elements right is tricky in any business – and it was no different at Rentalcars. It’s part trading and analytics, part technical and part relationships; building solid partnerships with suppliers that are mutually beneficial and adding as much value as you take.

Our journey at Rentalcars saw us go through many different phases and evolutions as we went from new market entrant to the global market leader. We started out doing all our contracting, yield management and reporting manually, but with hundreds of destinations and suppliers to manage, a multitude of customer source markets with different prices and competitors to keep pace with, as well as technological changes in how we worked with our suppliers, we had to continually challenge what we did to stay ahead.

A key to finding the right balance in our business came from using more of the extensive data we had to drive decisions, and automating more processes to free up time for the team to drive more value in and from the market. We’re now eager and excited to be able to bring this experience and our learnings, (both good and bad!), to other management teams who face similar situations and challenges.