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The large spending on IT experts, strategy consultants in China, and analysts was necessary, she says, to quickly modernise a2 after it had failed to keep pace with its enormous revenue and distribution growth.
“We didn’t have an IT person in the company when I arrived… not a single IT person,” Ms Hrdlicka says. “Supply chain, the ERP (enterprise resource planning) system, everything was super fine for a company that’s turning over $50 million in revenue, but not one who’s on its way to a billion.”
“So of course you have to spend to get people who know what they’re doing, because you don’t have anybody inside the company who does.“
Ms Hrdlicka said she appreciated that Geoff Babidge – A2’s previous CEO, who returned temporarily after she left abruptly in late 2019 – later publicly endorsed the work she commissioned as “high quality” and “very valid”.
Virgin has shed around 3000 employees – or a third of its workforce – in the past year and Ms Hrdlicka previously warned more jobs could go when the JobKeeper wage subsidy program ends on March 28.
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But Virgin said this week the federal package to prop up the airline industry by paying for 800,000 half-price air tickets should be enough to stave off further redundancies, provided state borders remain open and demand recovers as expected.
Virgin is currently flying at around 50 per cent of its pre-COVID domestic capacity, while Qantas and Jetstar are at 60 per cent and targeting 80 per cent by mid-year.
The half-price airfare scheme’s announcement on Thursday triggered a 78 per cent jump in flight searches on Virgin’s website and a 40 per cent jump in bookings, the airline said on Friday, prompting it to launch a two-hour, half-price sale on Friday. Jetstar quickly matched that by offering fares as low as $25.
