CIO —
GRAND WINNER
General Motors Corp.
INDUSTRY: Manufacturing
LOCATION: Detroit
REVENUE: $193 billion
EMPLOYEES: 375,000
www.gm.com
WINNING SYSTEM: OnStar uses wireless technology and the global positioning system satellite network to deliver 24-hour emergency assistance, telecommunications services and vehicle diagnostic information to 3 million subscribers who own GM vehicles. OnStar provides services such as automatic notification to emergency responders when a vehicle’s air bag deploys, stolen vehicle location assistance and remote door unlocking. Three small buttons placed along the dashboard or on the vehicle’s rearview mirror allow instant access to an OnStar call center representative, to 911 emergency call centers or hands-free wireless calling.
BUSINESS VALUE: OnStar contributes to driver safety and security and, as a result, provides GM with an additional selling point for its vehicles. OnStar’s call center staff responds monthly to 450 reports of stolen vehicles, 950 air bag deployments and 85,000 roadside assistance calls. Emergency personnel can be contacted through three OnStar call centers, which are connected to more than 9,000 emergency response centers in the United States and Canada. General Motors says 80% more customers have become repeat customers since OnStar was introduced, and GM’s dealers report OnStar helps them sell more automobiles. In addition, GM says that data collected from vehicles through OnStar is used to make improvements to vehicle performance, helping the company avoid product recalls.
SUCCESS STRATEGY: GM kept the user interface simple. In addition, after initial marketing missteps, the company focused OnStar services on features related to
the safety and performance of its vehicles.
INVESTMENT: Unavailable
KEY TECHNOLOGIES: GPS satellite network; IBM, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard client/server systems (for hosting call center, voice response systems, website and data delivery applications); Avaya switches for voice and data calls, as well as Cisco for pure data services; Verizon wireless telecommunication services
I.T. EXECUTIVE: Ralph Szygenda, group VP and CIO, General Motors
BUSINESS SPONSOR: Chet Huber, president, OnStar
WHAT WE LIKED: Created a public service that helps to save lives and
simultaneously benefits the core business of manufacturing and selling cars.
ADP Dealer Services Group
INDUSTRY: High-tech
LOCATION: Hoffman Estates, Ill.
REVENUE: $1 billion
EMPLOYEES: Unavailable
www.dealersuite.com
WINNING SYSTEM: ADP Dealer Services provides technology and data services such as business intelligence and CRM to nearly 20,000 vehicle dealers in the United States, Canada and Europe. Over four years, ADP Dealer Services combined a dozen call centers into one virtual support organization, which the company runs using its support virtualization and automation system.
The system provides several functions: It monitors customer applications, alerting the help desk to problems and enabling many of them to be fixed before clients are aware of them; it delivers patches and software upgrades to customers automatically; and when clients do call with a problem, the system routes them to the first available agent (in the past, clients were sent to regional support centers, based on their location).
