The big fix at Toyota Motor Sales
When Barbara Cooper joined as a CIO at Toyota When Barbara Cooper joined as a CIO at Toyota,
she discovered that IS was isolated and primitive – ‘almost 1970s-like’ (Pearlson, 2013). She was faced
with a whole host of problems (Pearlson, 2013). She was in charge of an under-performing and isolated
IT department that had no support from the senior management (Pearlson, 2013). One of the complaints
was that even though a lot of money was being spent on IT projects, they were frequently disappointed
with the results (Pearlson, 2013). An example was a badly delayed PeopleSoft ERP implementation
(Pearlson, 2013).
The business units were outsourcing their IT systems even though they had an IT department in
house (Pearlson, 2013). Nobody understood the cost of delivering IT and they did not have any
accountable IT teams (Pearlson, 2013). Business executives cut deals with IS without considering
architecture standards, system integration or business goals (Pearlson, 2013). There was no IT personnel
to align IS to their business goals (Pearlson, 2013).
The IT department was not organized efficiently (Pearlson, 2013). The relationship managers had
only limited responsibility in the vertical area they served which made it difficult to understand who was
to be held accountable (Pearlson, 2013). The lack of interaction between business side and IT led to poor
