Going, going, gone
The biggest e-boon to GE Capital has been GE's e-Auctions. Through buying everything from office paper to raw manufacturing materials online, GE saved millions.
"We don't manufacture anything, so for us, it comes down to simplifying communications with our customers," says Steve Hacala, GE Capital's managing director of corporate technology and e-business. The company is rolling out "e-deal rooms," where all players can make deals in a secure online meeting place, reducing travel and overnight delivery bills. The rooms will also slash the time it takes to close a deal, says Hacala, who predicts the system will save US$5 million this year.
The biggest e-boon to GE Capital has been GE's e-Auctions, a system that GE senior VP and CIO Gary Reiner promoted last year to consolidate the company's purchases across departments.
Through buying everything from office paper to raw manufacturing materials online, GE saved roughly $480 million in the past year.
GE Capital plans to move 100 percent of its purchasing online this year (GE expects e-commerce to account for 35 percent of its total purchasing by year's end). Already GE Capital has realised a 25 percent drop in the cost of office supplies and a 29 percent decrease in telecom costs in Japan.
A bitter pill
A few false starts can teach a company a lot about what its customers really want.
Not all of GE's Internet initiatives have been smashing successes. Take GE Aircraft Engines. The company launched a glitzy customer service Web site early last year, with beta-testers that included Delta Air Lines and Continental Airlines.
Several weeks into the process, the company realised that few customers were using the site. The reason? "It was really slow," says one Delta employee who used it. "We had to wait like 20 seconds for a photo to download, and for all the graphics."
GE soon learned that at the desktop level, 70 percent of the airlines' employees connected at speeds slower than a 56Kbps modem.
"We were throwing so much infrastructure at this ourselves, we didn't realise that we were ahead of some of these people," says Rick Kennedy, spokesman for GE Aircraft Engines.
Now the site is built for speed, with just a smattering of graphics. The result? "Much better," says the Delta employee. "We told them, 'We know who you are--you don't have to try and impress.' And we don't really care about pretty."
