Sidebar: IT Is Getting More Important Than Ever, Szygenda Says

Computerworld - WASHINGTON -- General Motors Corp. CIO Ralph Szygenda spoke with Computerworld about IT issues at last week's awards ceremony, where he won an individual award for information leadership. (The interview was conducted before GM said it plans to lay off 25,000 of its manufacturing workers.) Excerpts follow:

General Motors Corp. CIO Ralph Szygenda Image Credit: Asa Mathat

What's your take on the arguments raised by Nicholas Carr about whether IT matters? IT matters a lot. There are certain areas of the business, like ERP systems, that will become commodities. I think that's the point he was trying to make. He overstated it, though. In fact, [IT] will be bigger than ever. Having premium products at the lowest price - kind of the Wal-Mart model - that's one [trend] driving the industry. The other one is globalization. Given those two things, companies are going to redo all their processes again, and I guarantee you, at that point, IT is not dead.

How do you ensure that IT is aligned with the business at GM? IT people have to be business people to start with. There is no chance of just being a technologist anymore. In what I call precision information technology, every dollar that you invest in information technology better deliver business results or you are not going to succeed. To do that, you have to understand the business as well.
At General Motors, if you look at all the people who work for me, they are great business leaders and great technologists. In the future, [they're] going to be [the] only survivors, and that's going to be hard for a lot of people because they didn't have both of those capabilities.

Your outsourcing deal with EDS is ending, and you said you're bidding out more than $15 billion worth of IT business over the next five years. What are you looking for from the bidders? They have [to have] the competency to help transform General Motors and to work as a team member with other information technology companies. It isn't lowest price. You've got to realize that information technology is a catalyst for change at General Motors. The whole end goal is to build the greatest cars and trucks, not to build great IT. It's just an enabler.

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