| | October 201719CIOReviewA GLOBAL UNDERSTANDING IMPERATIVE IN THE AUTOMOTIVE WORLDBy Dennis Hodges, CIO, Inteva ProductsCloud ERP, our Bread and ButterWe have fully embraced cloud computing at Inteva. We run our ERP system through the cloud--which is our bread and butter system. Cloud computing allows us to keep our costs low, keep our skill set at a higher operational level and not be bogged down by routine technical tasks.Replace Applications that Prison DataFirst of all, this is an issue across all industries--not just the automotive industry. I have found that many companies use older applications that treat data like a prison--data goes in and never comes out.Data has cross-functional business uses and the challenge is in creating relationships between disparate systems to extract the correct data reports. For example, a sales person can input projections into a Sales Forecasting system, which would also benefit the finance department, but the finance department uses its own system and different terminology. There must be a way for business units to easily extract the needed data, regardless of the system, terminology, and skill sets of the people who input the data.CIOs Focus on Process ImprovementsOver the last few years, especially now that our business is in the cloud, my role has been more focused on process improvements, with emphasis on functional analysis and treating our business needs. I now have two process engineers in my team who help me with this as well. I joke that I should be called the CIO INSIGHTS
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