Although the speed at which the Big Three tends to do things can be charitably described as being deliberate, it seems as though the Internet is forcing them to act with significantly more haste. According to John F. Smith, GM vice president and general manager of GM Service Parts Operations, he and his peers Darrell Davis, senior vice president, DaimlerChrysler Service and Parts Operations, and Mike Jordan, president of Ford's Automotive Consumer Services Group, got together in May, 2000, to discuss an initiative wherein the three vehicle manufacturers, with a technology partner, Bell & Howell, would create a B2B portal that is specifically aimed at facilitating the transactions between dealers and wholesale customers (e.g., collision shops, fleets, and mechanical repair shops). The first product offering through the portal, which is being tested at 10 dealerships (there are an estimated 15,000; a bigger roll-out is anticipated after the second quarter of next year) is called "CollisionLink." Essentially, the function of this system is to allow a repair shop to submit a request for parts to a dealer that would be specific and accurate. It seems that ordinarily, there can be a back-and-forth between the shop and the dealer due to inaccurate or incomplete information such that it takes the submission of about four orders to complete just one repair job. CollisionLink is meant to get the ordering done in one, which would be a big benefit to all of those people whose cars have been in a collision; speed and efficiency would undoubtedly also make the insurance industry happy.
Here's an interesting aspect about this new initiative, which was announced on December 7. Unlike Covisint, it has a CEO and president, Chuck Rotuno, former senior vice president and general manager, Global Automotive Publishing, Bell & Howell Publishing Services.
But also unlike Covisint, when it was announced in December, it didn't have a name.
That's fast.
