Oliver Schloesser

Analysis of the divergence between theory and practice: How Covisint's course of strategy can improve the performance of the automotive industry Oliver Schloesser

MA-Thesis / Master, die am 08.01.2004 erfolgreich an einer Universität in Großbritannien im Fachbereich East London Business School (ELBS) eingereicht wurde. Abstract: This management report identifies and analyses the major inefficiencies in the altering strategies of Covisint® - the former proclaimed biggest electronic B2B-marketplace in the world - from its inauguration until the present day. Covisint® was founded by a consortium of automotive OEMs, i.e. General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and DaimlerChrysler in the beginning of 2000. This electronic B2B-platform represented the intention to establish an industry-wide standard that every automotive company should be forced to use if it wants to generate business in future. Moreover, Covisint® represented the ambitious vision of the "Big Three" to put their automotive supply chains on the Internet in order to improve their process efficiency in various ways. At that point of time many writers already called Covisint® "the third revolution in the automotive industry" (Industrial-IT 2000, p. 13). As this chosen prominent example will show, many managerial failures have been made causing the marketplace's continuous low performance. The management report mainly is based on 34 interviews conducted with automotive industry managers and experts from spring until autumn 2003. The extensive empirical research should allow obtaining an up-to-date and profound view of the interrelated inefficiencies in Covisint®'s strategies. The crucial issues on every of the detected three major strategies as standardised electronic B2B-marketplace for the global automotive industry (1. strategy), as application service provider/ASP (2. strategy) and as messaging- and communication-hub (3. strategy) will be revealed, differentiated and critically discussed. The manifold and interrelated reasons for failures of each strategy will be analysed. Finally, in order to avoid the repetition of