What fuel is left in the tank on recovery and what kind of macroeconomic GDP environment are we going to be in 2024? So those are the sort of the variables as such. The one we directly control the share gains and we see 4 to 5 points of growth in 2024 from our new wins as a baseline, and then you’re going to have to make a judgment about what you think is going to come in terms of additional recovery and what you think will come from the broader macro-economic environment. And that is challenging, I think there’s probably more uncertainty now than when we did this, call 90-days ago, macro political and economic conditions are pretty uncertain. And so I do think, as you look out 2024, it’s not clear yet, you know, how those headwinds and tailwinds going to influence the overall market growth in 2024.
What we’re doing, Lee, is making sure that we are prepared for different growth scenarios in 2024, and making sure that we have the flexibility in our model to adapt, if we are in a higher or lower growth scenario. And I think we’ve proven in terms of the cost savings, the synergies, the margin expansion that they will serve us very well, if we do find ourselves in a lower growth environment in 2024. But obviously, I think we need a little bit more time to see exactly how the year ahead is going to play out.
Lee Horowitz: Helpful. Thanks. And maybe just one follow-up sort of you know, present in time you may be talking more about the promise of generative AI technologies. Obviously, you guys have a big head count organization, so presumably, there’s a lot of benefits that it can have across the P&L. I guess how quickly do you think some of the cost savings that can be gained via digital agents and the like can be realized across the P&L. It seems like the technology move very quickly and perhaps this could be a margin driver next year Just any help there would be great? Thanks so much.
Paul Abbott: Yes, sure. 40% of our costs are people costs that are in the voice channel serving customers, and so that does present an opportunity for us to drive productivity gains and improve efficiency and also at the same time improve the customer experience. Driving productivity gains with automation and AI is not new to us, but we do that today with Egencia, with Neo, we analyze the demand that comes in to the voice channel and we look at what’s driving that demand and we build those features into our own software platforms. That’s why our digital adoption rate is now 77% of transactions coming through digital channels. And so when you asked about the timeline associated with these things, some of it is already happening today.
I think what is very interesting, is the power of generative AI and large language models, it just open up new possibilities for us to do some of these things at much, much greater scale. And we are focused in three areas, right? One is the area I just mentioned, which is our travel council and productivity environment. The second area is our finance function and looking at ways that we can use AI to automate more of our finance processing. And the third actually is product and tech using AI to actually do more of our basic programing and engineering work. Those three areas for us are all interesting areas of focus that can deliver savings over the medium to long term, and we have a cost savings plan that rolls out over multiple years and we have savings against AI driven automation in ’24 and ’25 and ’26.
So I hope that gives you a flavor for where it’s headed.
Lee Horowitz: Helpful. Thanks so much.
Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Toni Kaplan of Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
