Stepping up a gear – with cutting-edge ICT

Tens of thousands of unsold and unwanted vehicles. Deep discounting on the part of dealers. Government bailouts to the tune of billions. In 2009, car-makers in Europe and the USA face their biggest challenge in decades. Experts from KPMG predict a wave of mergers, acquisitions and strategic alliances and plummeting revenues and profits between now and 2013. As a result, automotive players around the world are looking for ways to rapidly cut costs and accelerate innovation. That means effective international collaboration is now more important than ever. And state-of-the-art ICT is a must. T-Systems is on hand to help. Because, as Martin Haubensack, vice president of A.T. Kearney, points out, there is some good news: “The worldwide desire for mobility is not going to disappear.”

There is an urgent need to trim spending and optimize processes in the automotive industry. “Cutting-edge ICT can help on both counts,” explains Joachim Langmack, responsible for key accounts at T-Systems. “We offer solutions that support the entire value chain: from design and development to assembly and retail.”

Innovative ICT can shift the entire value chain up a gear, and help companies succeed despite increasingly fierce competition. T-Systems is the No. 1 provider of ICT to the automotive sector in Western Europe. “Our knowledge of ICT, coupled with our understanding of the car industry’s business processes, make us experts in this field. We have about 6000 people serving the automotive industry, based in the world’s major markets,” says Langmack. T-Systems’ answer to the current crisis comprises two elements: first, automotive players can reduce expenditure by outsourcing ICT and concentrating on their core business. T-Systems’ portfolio ranges from conventional offshoring to the dynamic provision of ICT resources, where companies only pay for what they actually use. The second approach is to provide applications that streamline communications and collaboration – such as the Platform for Orchestrated Engineering Networks (PLATON). This enables engineers based all over the world to team up for projects, exchange design data, hold video conferences and edit documents via secure connections. As a result, all users have access to the same information. In addition, ICT can also help companies streamline production processes.

Read more about how ICT can help automotive players in the current crisis in the print edition of Best Practice.