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April 1, 2004
Wrap-up: CIO Explains Role of Information Technology in GM’s Success
Szygenda also predicts upturn in domestic IT
employment
By Tiff Ting, McCombs PPA major
Many good companies fail to be great, but General Motors will not be one of them, said Ralph Szygenda, chief information officer of GM. On March 25, Szygenda appeared at the McCombs School as part of the VIP Lecture Series to discuss GM’s history from the early 1900s to today. According to Szygenda, GM’s flexibility has been the key to its tradition of progress.
Like many mature companies, Szygenda said, GM has had its ups and downs, oscillating from the top of its industry in earlier decades to approaching bankruptcy in the early 1990s. But since its nadir a decade ago, the automobile monolith has engineered a dramatic comeback by uniting improved products, business processes and technology under great leadership. Part of the most recent upswing comes from creative product development and marketing in global markets such as China, Brazil, South Korea, India, Thailand, Mexico, Poland and Russia. For each of these countries, GM designers created tailor-made cars to meet diverse customer needs.
GM is ready to make its next major market leap with the development of alternative fuel vehicles. In the face of dwindling oil supplies and increasing volatility in the global oil market, Szygenda predicted that GM would have hydrogen fuel cell cars on the road by 2010. This innovation will change the world in ways we can only imagine, he said.
On another front, when asked by a student whether information technology jobs would continue to decline, Szygenda said, “I believe we are at the end of the IT recession. Get ready, the IT job market is coming back up.” Though many Americans fear the outsourcing of IT jobs, Szygenda pointed out that complex IT tasks will stay in the country while programming moves offshore. Companies must keep core company knowledge and secrets by only outsourcing tasks not central to the core business.
Although he is the CIO, Szygenda emphasized that simply knowing IT does not make someone an IT leader. Szygenda spends only 20 percent of his time on technology—the rest is spent understanding GM’s core business. Using IT effectively has helped GM accomplish both short- and long-term goals. Szygenda noted that in 1996, GM had more than 7,000 information systems in its extended business. An $8 billion investment in new architecture and the Internet has connected GM to 3.5 million customers and 19,000 suppliers—all linked in real time.
When it comes to IT employee performance reviews, General Motors no longer asks, “What have you done with information technology?” Instead, said Szygenda, the company asks, “What have you changed in GM?” Business leaders need a foundation in technology, but they must also have strategic business know-how, Szygenda concluded.
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