SABER Inc.

The man who came to speak on Saber Inc. was originally just in IT but has received his MBA and is now overseeing the work in Krakow Poland. He has worked 10 years in Krakow for Saber. Saber does the software for systems with airlines and hotel chains which helps brand their business as they work with big name companies. GDS (Global Distribution System) is used for cruise lines as well for information to online agencies such as travelocity and Expedia that customers can attain. SABER is mainly focused on the software which can be complicated at times but they have a highly trained and skilled work force to pull from. They don't have one specific niche product but one main specific resource which is their people. They are an extremely horizontally integrated company with the main focus on all the IT software designers working in teams to get their job done. When they select people from Engineering and Computer science workers they have a lot cheaper labor costs because of the 750 people that they need working in Krakow. The main difference in business in his experience between the U.S. and Poland is how in the U.S. we see business as everything half full and in Krakow they see a lot of business as half empty and are much more pessimistic about business. Probably because of the monumental changes that have happened in the past 20 years.

All of the corporate culture of SABER is important in the minds of the people in control so you can see senior executives very easily which shows how flat and horizontal this corporation really is. They do this to make sure that people are on the same goal with no teams purely related in Krakow. They have centers in Banglor, India, Buenos Aires and Dallas that are all working on the same project and global opportunites in a joined effort. They have joined the European Union and now have centers in Ireland, Italy, Greece that have joined the company. They don't have much movement or turnover from the Polish people either. With the new government and political situation in Krakow they had a new generation of the workforce creating the 9,000 employees of SABER today in 50 offices world wide.

The company started out in the early 60's when the C.E.O.s of American Airlines and IBM came together while flying on a plane discussing how airlines can work in the computer business. They eventually came together to work on this and were successful until SABER broke off in the early 90's. SABER stands for Semi-Automated Business Environment of Research. Competition is not as clear who they are working against as you think it would be because of all the different softwares and services they provide. One main competition though is for the talented workforce that they need to attain and maintain. Right now they are working on several products distributed in Germany for Hotels and Railways.

They don't have much turnover from their workforce because the people working for them are very satisfied to move from multiple technologies from Microsoft, SAN, Oracle and IBM with different systems. It is exciting and appealing to be able to change the areas that you work on 2 years at a time. With their flat organization their business performance is challenging but still doing well in these tough economic times. With the business that they were in they could see the recession before it even happened because they could slowly see people stop traveling and people cutting back on travel expenses with less booking.

They work with 250 travel agencies around the world today providing services to the home office through internal transfers of software to the company from Krakow to Dallas. They have to follow laws through the European Union though which can make this difficult at times. They make $3 billion annually world wide. Right now they are trying to introduce new ways for reservations and booking of flights because the shorter amount of time it takes for people to get a flight means the faster they see returns and get profit from commissions.

They were public until 2006 and then they were acquired by tow private equity funds. Their two biggest costs are people and maintaining their operating systems.