CARTUS CEO CHARTS FUTURE
Tech, customer service seen as vital to growth
I also grew up playing sports, mostly basketball, so I am competitive. I definitely like to make sure we are winning in the marketplace and gaining market share. That’s something I always like to measure as part of my leadership style. OK, let’s look at the numbers to see if we’re gaining market share because I want to win. Katrina Helmkamp, CEO of Cartus
Katrina Helmkamp took over as CEO of Cartus, one of Danbury’s largest employers, in July and brings with her a wealth of managerial experience with large and small companies.
Cartus, a relocation company, had been led by Kevin Kelleher from 1997 to this past January, when he was moved to the role of executive adviser to the new CEO of Realogy Holdings, the parent company of Cartus. Ryan Schneider took over as Realogy CEO in January and made several leadership changes soon after taking the reins of the real estate and relocation company.
Schneider said he chose Helmkamp to lead Cartus because of her global experience in leading companies through transformations, launching new products and focus on technology.
“She will be responsible for improving Cartus’s topand bottom-line performance,” Schneider said in June. “I am incredibly excited for our Cartus clients and customers for what Katrina will bring to their experiences. Katrina will also work closely with Realogy’s other business leaders to help drive our aggressive change agenda across the company.”
Hempkamp held leadership roles at ServiceMaster and Whirlpool before taking CEO roles at two privately held companies: SVP Wordwide and Lenox Corp.
Cartus has about 1,300 employees at its Danbury headquarters and 2,700 worldwide.
Helmkamp is an avid hiker and loves the outdoors, passions forged during her younger years living in Oregon. She currently lives in Danbury. During an interview with Hearst Connecticut Media, Helmkamp said she is eager to build upon Cartus’s strengths and bolstering areas needing improvement.
Q: Do you feel added pressure to succeed coming back to a company with stockholders?
A: It’s not short-term pressure. I’ve been brought in to do the fun stuff, which first is to look at the immediate strategy and the longterm growth strategy. Cartus and Realogy are willing to make the right investments if we have some good long-term growth opportunities. I believe we will have a number of those and technology will be one of those key investments.
Of course, we will also be looking at efficiencies. We can’t always be looking at revenue growth, it has to be profit growth. That’s that standard whether it’s with a privately held or public company.
Q: How would you describe your leadership style?
A: I also grew up playing sports, mostly basketball, so I am competitive. I definitely like to make sure we are winning in the marketplace and gaining market share. That’s something I always like to measure as part of my leadership style. OK, let’s look at the numbers to see if we’re gaining market share because I want to win.
I’m also very team-oriented. I care a lot about developing the team and having my whole team win. I also have a real passion for developing people. I feel strongly about having people get feedback about how
they are progressing and that they get opportunities to grow in their career.
Q: Do you still play basketball?
A: A little bit, for fun. I’ll get out and play horse. It’s always hard to stay in shape well enough to play full-court basketball.
Q: Is this your first time living in Connecticut?
A: I grew up mostly in Oregon, which is where I fell in love with the outdoors. Then I moved to Chicago and lived there longer than I’ve lived anywhere else. That’s where I met my husband (at Northwestern University.) After 15 years working in consulting in the Chicago area, I’ve had operating roles where I’ve been president or CEO of various businesses that were anywhere from a couple hundred million dollars in revenues to about 8 billion dollars in revenue, and I just went where the job was. I was in Memphis, Michigan, Nashville, outside of Philadelphia and now Danbury. I’m checking out most of the United States.
Q: There were rumblings throughout town that Cartus would leave Danbury after the leadership changes announced in January. Is Cartus staying in Danbury?
A: I don’t see any reason why we would be moving our headquarters from Danbury. Instead we are pursuing growth opportunities as a company and I feel comfortable we will find a number of those opportunities. If anything, we would be looking to add jobs in Danbury.
Q: What are some trends in the relocation industry?
A: Corporate clients are segmenting more and more as they look at their moves. They continue to want that high-touch, involved move for the senior executives and complex international ex-pat assignments. They are also looking for a simple lump-sum approach when they are looking at interns or new hires who do not have as complicated a move to go through.
Q: Are there fewer relocations these days with technology allowing more people to work from home?
A: We’re digging into that. It would appear the corporatepaid relocations might be down slightly, but the number of jobrelated moves have stayed about the same. We are looking at some U.S. census data to try to get a handle on that. In-house numbers from Realogy, our parent company, show that for the first half of this year compared to first half of last year we are up 4 percent in the number of moves we touch. So, we are showing some growth and therefore I think we are gaining market share.
Q: What attracted you to the Cartus role?
A: Cartus has some key strengths already in place, but also some really fun growth opportunities and, to me, that’s the right mix. The global coverage we have is one of Cartus’s core strengths — this amazing global network of suppliers that allows us to do relocations in 185 counties. I prefer a global business so that was appealing.
Our relocations consultants are another core strength. They are just really good at what they do in terms of helping people through a very stressful time of life. And that shows up in the third strength, which is customer satisfaction.
The area where I think we can do even better and therefore gain market share is applying technology and innovation in three different areas: the customer, the client and our own employees. Right now, we are in the process of developing what will be our strategy for the next three years or so and we are explicitly developing priorities in each of those three areas. We are going to make investments in technology.
We launched MovePro Technology in September — that was under way before I got here, so I can’t claim credit for that — but I think it’s a really good example of a nice step in the right direction because it has improvements within it that help the customer, and key improvements for the client. It draws on more than two million moves in the Cartus database. It’s a step that shows we are moving toward much faster innovation.
We think the combination of technology and customer service will be powerful for us — having the technology that allows people to play around and learn a lot on their own, but still have that lifeline, if you will, of a very experienced relocation consultant who can help you with your expectations and help you when anything goes wrong.
Customer service is probably our single-most important metric that we look at internally and talk to our clients about as a key advantage for Cartus.