Beyond achieving critical economies, the goal of globalization at GM is to enable units in far-flung locations to think and act as a common part of a single corporate organism, the company said.
In carrying out this plan, GM standardized on certain key software applications: the Siemens NX enterprise CAD application; the Siemens Teamcenter Community platform, a collaborative platform for engineers; Microsoft Communicator for instant messaging; and Microsoft SharePoint Server for virtual meetings.
Twenty thousand GM engineers have used SharePoint Server as part of the Teamcenter Community platform for several years. Now GM is making those collaboration tools available to the rest of the enterprise.
"It’s a rationalized set of systems to run globally," said Killeen.
The expected benefits to GM of a unified global approach are greater efficiency and lower costs. In tough economic times, Killeen pointed out, SharePoint Server offers the added benefit of keeping corporate travel to a minimum, since employees are able to conduct virtual meetings with one another rather than having to get on planes to visit remote sites. To further reduce travel costs, Killeen is looking into adding IP-based audio and video conferencing to the mix.
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