Driving B2B with Mark Morley

IT Priorities for the Automotive Industry in 2008

Many executives in the automotive industry were glad to see the back of 2007. This was a year which saw immense change within the automotive industry. Slow growth in most markets, numerous acquisitions and mergers, companies going out of business and significant workforce reductions in both the OEMs and their respective supply chains. Despite their best efforts many automotive companies are struggling to work out where to go next in their quest to return to profitability. However on the positive side a few of the major Tier 1 suppliers, particularly in North America, are just starting to emerge from potential bankruptcy as a result of drastically restructuring their business operations.

Performance of Established and Emerging Automotive Markets in 2007

OK, well as the 2007 vehicle production figures are starting to filter out I thought it was time to provide a quick review of the production performance of the established and emerging automotive markets around the world. 2007 was quite a turbulent year for the automotive industry and there were a number of surprising facts and figures to emerge from last year’s production of vehicles around the world. According to the International Organisation of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers, OICA, just over 73 million vehicles were produced in 2007, that’s a 5.4% growth over 2006 production figures. This production figure includes passenger and commercial vehicles and is the equivalent to a global turnover of around $2.79 trillion. An interesting way to view this is that if the automotive industry were an economy then this would make it the fourth largest economy in the world (based on 2006 GDP figures) after the United States, Japan and Germany. To achieve this level of production, the automotive industry, on a global basis, employs nearly 9 million people which in turn represents 5% of the total global manufacturing employment. 

Ford says "TATA" to Jaguar and Land Rover.

Ford finally said goodbye to two of their automotive brands on 26^th March 2008, the Indian conglomerate TATA took control of the two luxury British car brands in a deal estimated to be around $2.3Billion. Jaguar and Land Rover were the cornerstones of Ford's premier automotive group, however due to tough economic conditions Ford has been forced to sell. Ford have owned Jaguar for nearly 20 years now and in that time they have struggled to turn Jaguar around, mainly due to changes in consumer demand and a general decline in the luxury car market in some regions of the world. Meanwhile Land Rover was actually a profitable business and has been so since Ford bought the company from BMW in 2000.  Ford had developed numerous joint business and engineering processes between Jaguar and Land Rover and for this reason trying to split and sell the brands independently would have been an expensive and lengthy process. In addition, both brands use a similar set of suppliers in the UK where Jaguar and Land Rover cars are manufactured and so rather than try to develop new supply chain strategies for both companies it was felt that both companies should be sold as a going concern to one buyer.  So who exactly are TATA and how have they got into the position of being able to buy two famous British car brands such as Jaguar and Land Rover?

B2B Outsourcing, A European Perspective.

So after a brief sabbatical, I thought it was time to start blogging again :)

In recent weeks we have been running a series of Executive Briefings across Europe to showcase a recent study that we conducted with Stanford University.  Late last year we completed a research study with Stanford which looked at the area of B2B outsourcing and why companies look to outsource their B2B infrastructures.