Manager

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...