Two years after launching its e-GM Internet division to sell cars
and trucks direct to consumers, General Motors is slowly and
quietly merging the unit into the company's mainstream.
GM claims this isn't a retreat from e-business, but that the
company planned all along to eventually reincorporate the division
into the rest of the company. "We're not scaling anything back,"
said a GM spokesman. "We're not refocusing."
The e-GM division was launched in August 1999 as a separate entity
to give it autonomy and fast success. Eventually, the company's
plans called for the unit to be merged back into the parent company
when employees throughout GM was ready to view the Internet as a
key part of its automotive and truck sales business.
Thilo Koslowski, an automotive analyst at GartnerG2, said this was
the right thing to do for vehicle manufacturers.
Vehicle manufacturers tend to be especially large and slow moving,
making them less able to adapt and use the Internet for selling,
Koslowski said. "It's extremely difficult for an auto manufacturer
to do it from within," he added.
"Ultimately, e-business will become 'business' and the 'e' will go
away," he said. "Now you have to get the rest of the company to
understand it."
By setting up a separate e-business division, GM avoided much of
that trouble, he said, making its e-commerce effort one of the more
successful ones among car manufacturers.
About 3,000 sales leads per day are received by GM dealerships
through the customer traffic generated by the e-GM Internet
division on the company's BuyPower Web site.