Sabre’s New CEO Wants to Instill an Accountability Culture
Photo Credit: Sabre CEO Sean Menke realizes the company has to improve on its product delivery to airlines. Sabre
Skift Take
In January there was a changing of the guard at Sabre. New CEO Sean Menke thinks his background as a former airline CEO gives him insight into what airlines want from Sabre in new products. But he'll need to up his company's product execution and delivery if he wants to maintain market share, according to employee complaints.
At first glance, it seems unlikely that Sabre, a company airlines hire to manage reservations, flights, and other functions, would have a project management problem.
The Southlake, Texas-based company saw its revenue rise 13.9 percent to $3.37 billion in 2016. How could a company with revenue growth like that have an uneven record when it comes to delivering products to customers?
Yet Sabre's new chief executive Sean Menke implicitly acknowledged some possible issues during its fourth quarter and full-year 2016 earnings call Tuesday. He said his company needed to up its game when it comes to execution and project management, though he phrased these ideas in heavily-coded corporate-speak.
Menke said, "The summation of our collective focus on value creation requires that we improve our allocation of resources to more effectively align with our customers' needs, time-to-market, and greatest return to Sabre. The heart of this is an honest assessment of our infrastructure, technolo
