BK's new CIO is bottom-line builder, company says

Nation's Restaurant News, March 14, 2005 by Alan J. Liddle

MIAMI -- Burger King Corp., based here, named consultant Rajesh "Raj" Rawal senior vice president and chief information officer for the enterprise, which is parent of the world's third-largest quick-service sandwich chain.

"Raj is a seasoned CIO with a superb track record of effectively aligning technology investments in support of business strategies," Burger King's chairman and chief executive, Greg Brenneman, said. "He has played a leading role in improving the bottom line at past organizations he's served and will be a tremendous asset as we work to grow this great brand."

A 25-year IT industry veteran, Rawal succeeds Rafael Sanchez, who recently left BK to join cruise line operator Carnival Corp. of Miami. BK sources said Rawal reports to Brenneman, who joined the company, which oversees the 11,000-unit-plus Burger King chain, as chief executive in August 2004 and was named chairman in February.

Before joining Burger King, Rawal was the principal partner in Axya Corp., an Olney, Md.-based consulting firm that helped large corporations with information technology, Burger King representatives reported. Previously, they said, Rawal also was senior vice president and chief information officer at Cendant Car Rental Group, which includes both the Avis and Budget brands. Before that he was chief information officer for GE Information Services.

According to Burger King, Rawal led the successful IT integration of Budget into Avis at Parsippany, N.J.-based Cendant and was responsible for the support of applications development and maintenance of systems for reservations, pricing and fleet management. In addition, BK said Rawal also held IT leadership positions with Trilegiant Corp., a provider of loyalty and affinity programs to leading financial services and retail companies, where he fine-tuned an Internet-based shopping service and oversaw the completion of a troubled, multiyear, financial application-development project.

Rawal graduated with honors from the University of Connecticut with a bachelor's degree in computer science, his new employer noted, and he holds a master's degree in operations research from Case Western Reserve University.

BK's new chief information officer was unavailable for comment about the information technology projects topping the company's priority list.

Under Sanchez, BK had embarked on a number of projects, including automating help in assigning and managing identities and network privileges tied to enterprise and online initiatives. Also, some restaurants within the system began testing customer self-service ordering kiosks, during Sanchez's watch.