Newsmaker: Sony's Brooks Moves Up Through Global Vision

Howard Z. Brooks always includes the Z.

It's part of an extremely acute attention to detail which would seem uptight were it not for Howard's relaxed attitude.

Meticulous and analytical, but unwilling to step on anybody's toes, Brooks' success in the creation and implementation of a travel program for Sony Music over the last seven years has just earned him a promotion. Now senior director of expense management and travel administration, based as always in New York City, Brooks is facing a number of new challenges.

Part of the reason he got the promotion, in fact, is one of those challenges--attempting to streamline travel purchasing among Sony Music and its divisions in Canada and the United Kingdom, as well as Sony Electronics and Sony Pictures.

Brooks is joining forces with his travel manager colleagues in those divisions to leverage their collective volume to stop duplicating each other's efforts. A newly created Sony Joint Travel Committee already has negotiated hotel contracts and is now working on airlines. "In September I called up my equivalents in those divisions and said, 'Let's compare notes--we've never sat in the same room,' " said Brooks, feet upon his desk. "It turns out that we've had a number of deals with the same suppliers. Now we're meeting regularly and looking at what we can accomplish in a systematic way."

The initial creation of Sony Music's travel program, seven years ago, came together in a similar, offbeat sort of way. Brooks had been with the company for a couple of months as director of special projects (an all purpose re-engineer) when he went to book his first business trip. "My assistant told me I could fly whoever, stay wherever and spend whatever, within reason," Brooks said. "So I went up to the VP of Finance and said 'perhaps we should have a travel program.' He said 'you're director of special projects--you do it.' "

Brooks admits that he knew nothing about travel at the time and looked with awe at over 400 travel agencies, no airline deals and several car rental suppliers. He "collected some data and did a study" on a small test portion of Sony Music's U.S.-based travel, he said. As a result, Brooks in 1991 saved about 10 percent of that portion's spend. After that first year, he suggested the company appoint him travel manager and it listened. The company has since saved millions of dollars on travel.

Asked what it is that he finds most rewarding about being Sony Music's travel manager--besides, of course, the ability to wear "entertainment industry attire" (jeans)--Brooks answered with something almost every travel manager can identify with: "I'm a cost-cutter, but it's not just about number-crunching. I love having a program come together from absolutely nothing.