HRG Picks N.A. Consulting Head

HRG last month announced the appointment of American Express Business Travel and IJet veteran Lee DeVet as vice president of HRG Consulting in North America. DeVet will head the regional consulting division and establish a North American-based consulting team, as North American clients are transitioned from HRG Consulting in Europe.

DeVet reports to HRG Global Consulting head Ian Flint, who is based in the United Kingdom. Flint has tasked DeVet with acquiring manpower to handle U.S. and Canadian clients.

"We need a good presence in Europe, which we have, but we also need an excellent presence in North America," according to Flint. "We are being very careful on how to grow it. Lee has a mandate to grow it as quickly as possible. There is the financial resource there to do so. We want to make sure we get the right people on board who are really skilled project managers, not having been something else somewhere else that touched on it. We want analysts that are true analysts."

DeVet said the strategy, as the North American business comes under his purview in the coming months, is to first build the team, then adapt HRG Consulting's European methodology and transition the analytical tools to fit the regional market.

"There are some peculiarities in the North American market," DeVet said. "Canada is a great example. It's a real peculiarity unto itself. We want to meet the needs of that client base head on, right here in North America."

"We are totally aware that the tools that have are very European and we are looking at how we will adapt them for the U.S.," said Flint, who added that 38 percent of the consulting division's clients are outside of the HRG TMC client base.

Prior to the appointment, DeVet worked at American Express Business Travel for more than 10 years in various roles including travel technology, management information systems and data reporting, client management, sales and consulting on airline negotiations with clients in the small business travel group within American Express Consulting Services.

Most recently, DeVet for three years worked at Annapolis, Md.-based IJet Intelligent Risk Systems, where he handled travel management companies' traveler-tracking data as manager of data management.