Pinpointing many of the projects implemented since CEO Mary Barra's predecessor, Dan Akerson, handpicked Mott to lead the automaker's IT operations is daunting. They include simple timesaving efforts, ways to streamline dealership and brand websites and complex tools for manufacturing and supply chain logistics that already have saved the automaker perhaps billions of dollars. Among the biggest early achievements was that GM now says it knows the exact profitability of every vehicle that rolls off an assembly line.
GM also has created a private internal cloud — nicknamed Galileo — to improve its business and IT operations, including four innovation centers and two data centers. They are handling triple the number of projects that the automaker used to commission simultaneously and completing them in half the time.
"IT is core, I think, to GM's revival, and I think it will be core to their success in the future," Akerson, who retired in January 2014, said in an interview last week. "We did map out a five-year plan, and I'm pleased to hear that much of it has taken form. We knew what we wanted to get to, and it's been achieved in large measure."
The IT operations arguably can influence every part of GM's business. While not the driving force behind monumental decisions such as exiting unprofitable vehicle segments and markets, including the sale of GM's European operations, IT is helping Barra and other senior leaders to make quicker, more well-informed decisions than executives ever could before.
"The reality is, we're an enabler," Mott said. "That's our job. I think we've done that, but I think we can do it even more and better."
Now, more than 80 percent of GM's IT employees develop tools and find ways to be more efficient, rather than just "run the business," as vendors had been doing previously, Mott said. It's a major reversal from 2012, when 90 percent of operations were outsourced to 35 agreements with outside companies and the automaker had only about 1,400 IT employees of its own.
GM's two enterprise data centers in suburban Detroit — consolidated from the 23 outsourced centers there were in 2012 — house 88 million gigabytes of data, 11 times more than the automaker had produced five years ago, according to Mott. That excludes data from a fleet of more than 100 autonomous Chevrolet Bolts in California, Arizona and Michigan tested through Cruise Automation, which the wholly owned subsidiary stores locally.
The amount of data will continue to increase, as nearly every vehicle GM sells globally is connected through OnStar, 4G LTE or a host of brand apps and websites. The automaker has more than 6 million vehicles equipped with 4G LTE.
Les Copeland, GM's CIO of global data strategy and services, says the company is the leader in the amount of data brought in from vehicles.
"We're second to none in our industry," Copeland said after a demonstration of GM's new Maxis internal data system here. "We are very much geared toward leveraging our data to drive business outcomes."
Maxis, essentially an advanced search engine of GM and third-party data, is one of the most substantial initiatives recently developed by the IT organization. GM could use it to project future warranty or recall costs, break-even points during a recession, or market and vehicle segment trends. Manufacturing executives could monitor capacity and vehicle production by plant or anticipate plant downtime based on current and historic sales trends.
"What typically yield the biggest value are when you can predict outcomes or you can prescribe what to do," Copeland said.
Charlie Russell, GM's senior manager of analytics and data services, described Maxis as a data "gateway" for all employees "to find the data they need anytime, anywhere, to make data-driven decisions."
Maxis was introduced during an IT town hall attended by Barra in August, after a beta launch with IT data employees in June. It officially launched this month.