Submitted by: Submitted by thuytienxinh
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Words: 1291
Pages: 6
Category: Business and Industry
Date Submitted: 03/27/2015 08:40 AM
THE BIG FIX AT TOYOTA MOTOR SALES (TMS)
When Barbra Cooper joined Toyota Motor Sales as CIO in late 1996, her reception was
lukewarm. She was an outsider in a company that prizes employee loyalty. Cooper was
surprised to find that IS was relatively isolated and primitive. ‘‘I would describe it as almost
1970s-like,’’ she says. Business units were buying their own IT systems because in-house
IT couldn’t deliver. There were no PCs or network management. And basic IT disciplines
such as business relationship management and financial management were largely absent.
‘‘No one understood the cost of delivering IT,’’ she says. Unfortunately IS personnel were
more like ‘‘order takers’’ than ‘‘business partners.’’
Worse, business execs cut deals with
their go-to guys in IS for project approval and funding, with no thought to architecture
standards, systems integration, or business benefits.
Before Cooper could rectify the situation, she found herself and her staff buried under
the Big Six technology projects.
The Big Six were expensive enterprise wide projects that
included a new extranet for Toyota dealers and the PeopleSoft ERP rollout, as well as four
new systems for order management, parts forecasting, advanced warranty, and financial
document management. Feeling besieged, the IS group made the mistake of not explaining
to the business all the things it was doing and how much it all cost.
Starting in 2001, Japanese executives were feeling squeezed because of a tanking
domestic Japanese market and lukewarm results from its global units. Toyota Motor Sales
USA, though, had increasing sales and market share. Japan relied more on its American
division’s profits, and from across the Pacific, the parent company looked more closely at
U.S. spending habits.
Both Japanese and U.S. management wanted to know more about IS’s runaway costs,
which had doubled after Cooper’s arrival and, at its peak, tripled. And Toyota Motor Sales...