Toyota
Australia’s chief information officer Ellis Brover has said the company has
initiated a review of its technology systems, as the company prepares to move its
focus to marketing in 2017.
Brover, who
became CIO three months ago, told The Australian Financial Review that a new
five-year strategy would emerge after the review concludes, and it will concern
internal technology.
“There are lots of opportunities for technology to make a
difference, whether it is in the data analytics and information space, or
whether it is in end-user productivity, which is very important in an
organisation that is heavily sales and marketing focused,” he told The AFR.
“We have a lot of people out on the road and therefore a lot
of time management challenges, so I think IT can do a hell of a lot. Our
challenge is to increase our agility to respond faster to sales and marketing
work, which is a different pace to a traditional back office IT
operation, and we need to be able to keep up.”
Toyota announced in February that they would end their
manufacturing operations in Australia in 2017. They followed Ford and Holden’s
departure announcements, and by 2018 there will be no more passenger vehicles assembled in the country.
Toyota has just implemented a new Logicalis cloud backup
service, and Brover said that cloud infrastructure and big data would only
become more important to the company in the future.