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Graphic: Shifting Gears at Ford
By CIOinsight
2003-01-14
Article Views: 2274
Article Rating: / 0
How Ford Motor Co. has changed its outmoded e-business strategies to save money and open new opportunities.
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Dash Portals
Old e-strategy: To give new cars Web access, satellite phone services and e-mail capabilities, and collect millions in Net services fees.
Fate: Projects halted, Wingcast telematics effort scrapped, buyers turned off by glitchy technology and pricey markups.
New strategy: Telematics being used by Ford's delivery fleet only, to monitor fuel costs.
Payoff: Fleet maintenance costs are decreasing.
Retailing
Old e-strategy: To create BuyerConnection Web site with Microsoft to let Ford buyers bypass dealer markups and order cars factory-direct.
Fate: Ford dissolved Microsoft partnership.
New e-strategy: FordDirect
site, run by dealers, is now used to boost sales.
Payoff: In the past year, Ford sold 100,000 cars from leads that wouldn't have been generated otherwise, for extra revenues of $1.6 billion.
Service
Old e-strategy: To create OwnerConnection Web site to improve service and collect customer data by letting owners manage their own warranty service.
Fate: Worries over privacy leaks doomed the effort.
New e-strategy: Net-enabled factory systems to cut service costs, track defects and fix them—before cars leave the plant.
Payoff: Quality improved 13 percent in 2002; recall alerts now based on eight problem reports vs. 60 before.
Suppliers
Old e-strategy: To save $750 billion industrywide and earn $3 billion annually in exchange fees by co-launching the Covisint B2B to reap better price and parts deals from 30,000 vendors.
Fate: Squabbling among GM, Ford, DaimlerChrysler, Renault and Nissan over security leaks and other issues limited use and savings.
New strategy: Covisint's new computer messaging service will let OEMs and suppliers communicate more easily, securely and effectively.
Payoff: Pending
Marketing
Old e-strategy: To team with Yahoo! CarPoint, iVillage and bolt.com to monitor the car-buying patterns of Web-surfers.
Fate: ConsumerConnect effort was downsized and absorbed into Ford's traditional marketing group; OwnerConnect effort refocused on data-
collection.
New goal: Develop a Ford-only customer data center from 50 million customer records and let all Ford businesses use it.
Payoff: Pending
Wired Workers
Old e-strategy: To offer all 350,000 employees a computer, printer and Net access for $5 a month to allow factory-floor adoption of new Net strategy.
Fate: Ford offered 158,000 employees the service but postponed further rollout, then scrapped the program to cut costs.
New goal: None
Payoff: Halting the program saves millions of dollars in hardware costs and service fees.
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