The GM Owner Center. Launched in January 2002, this free online service stores maintenance records and manuals for current GM owners, and also provides service reminders and vehicle-value-estimation tools. The site had 14,000 registered members one week after the official launch, which covered only certain GM models. Support for other GM brands is being rolled out in the first half of 2002.

DealerWorld. This online portal includes applications such as the just-launched VIN (vehicle ID number) Lookup, which allows dealers to simplify the formerly cumbersome process of determining what incentives a buyer qualifies for on a given model. GM also recently rolled out a package of services and tools that includes templates for the dealers’ own websites, which provide a consistent look-and-feel and reduce dealers’ burden of site maintenance.

GMAC SmartAuction. This Web-based system allows all GM dealers to bid for leased vehicles that were returned to the dealer and are now owned by GMAC. This process is cheaper and faster than live auctions (shaving 30 to 45 days off the normal selling time) and also reduces the likelihood of damage to autos because transportation to an actual auction site is eliminated. GM has sold more than 188,000 cars that way since launching SmartAuction in early 2000.


For Suppliers: Streamlined purchases, faster product designs
Covisint. This purchasing exchange, formed by the troika of DaimlerChrysler, Ford and GM, is the most-publicized of GM’s links to its suppliers?but it is likely not the most valuable one. GM reports that it has conducted more than 600 auctions on the site thus far. In 2001, the company did roughly $100 billion in auctions on the site, achieving a reduction of 3 percent in its per-transaction costs for those deals, according to published reports. Because GM’s major competitors also use the site, it’s natural to assume that Covisint is, competitively, a wash. That’s not necessarily the case, says Kevin Prouty, research director of AMR Research in Boston, whose clients include the three major OEMs. Prouty says Covisint may provide an advantage to whichever OEMs use it correctly.

It’s one thing to put materials like staplers out for bid. It’s another to toss out a long-standing power-train supplier for a cheaper bid only to spend time making sure that power train is up to snuff. That is a process that Prouty describes as "commoditizing relationships" with suppliers?a mistake he says American OEMs have a history of making.

Instead, Covisint, if used correctly, has the potential to accomplish the opposite by building closer relationships with suppliers, according to Prouty. Companies can simply use the exchange infrastructure to execute deals more efficiently. Will GM do this? "It remains to be seen how they’re going to use it," says John Waraniak, who handles Covisint for Johnson Controls, an $18 billion automotive supplier based in Milwaukee. "You want to reduce the cost and complexity but complement the relationship."