Ready ... Set ... Go!

Even the best application has no value until it's up and running. That's the concept behind Ford's Application Implementation Center (AIC).

"When you've made up-front investments in designing or enhancing systems, you don't reap any benefits until you get them installed," says Jerry Peterson, Ford's SDG director. "We wanted to shorten the implementation time frame as much as possible."

	In the first nine months of 1999, the AIC had already completed 427 launches and upgrades. "That's more than twice as many applications as we launched in all of 1998, when we were in partial operation with the AIC," says Peterson. "And it's probably three times as many as we did the year before that, when the AIC didn't exist, so the initial results are quite favorable."

Peterson relates that, in the past, launching an application to all of Ford's manufacturing plants worldwide could take years. By comparison, developing a new vehicle typically takes an automaker between 15 to 30 months.

The objective of the AIC is to significantly speed the application deployment process by maintaining a dedicated staff of specialized IT professionals that can be mobilized quickly whenever an application needs to be launched.

As a strategic partner, Compuware is providing the professional staffing services required to deploy applications throughout Ford, with multiple deployment teams working simultaneously.

Peterson adds that the most encouraging measure of success has been the response from Ford employees who use the applications in their day-to-day tasks.

"They're telling us they like the process, the professionalism of the launches, and the training activities that are taking place," he says. "The sincerest kind of feedback we could get is that they're asking for more."

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