Collision Course

And on it goes. The weekly meeting of the eConsumer Group, formerly called the Internet and New Media team, runs a brisk 90 minutes, from 8 am to 9:30 am. Every minute is explicitly allocated to issues like acquiring new domain names and looking for a place in Europe to host an additional ford.com server. The lightning round is supposed to take place from 9:10 am to 9:29 am, and Frykman, a recent addition to the team, is sticking to the schedule. Nearly everyone in the room is wearing an item of blue clothing, some with Ford logos; from the looks of things, it could be school-spirit day. And though most Internet groups inside big companies operate with a measure of unrestraint -- not unlike punk-rock bands making an appearance at Radio City Music Hall -- this group operates with the precision of a marching corps.

"We want to be a disciplined organization," Cornellier explains after the meeting, sitting in his cubicle in one of the two orderly rows that house most of the team. "We want to keep moving fast, but as we grow, it's important that we don't lose discipline. It doesn't win us much respect inside Ford if we're running amok."

Inside Ford, the automaker that makes 5 of the 10 best-selling vehicles in the United States and earns an estimated $150 billion in annual sales, the eConsumer Group has discovered that discipline and efficiency enable it to take giant steps into the future -- including some that are jarring for the company in the short term. But those giant steps, like adding new applications to the ford.com site or forging alliances with companies like Microsoft, compel managers throughout the 345,000-employee company to wrestle with the central issues of Ford's role in the Internet economy. "A big part of what we do," says Cornellier, a 14-year veteran of Ford, "is to force issues to the top. The stuff we develop and the deals we sign force conversations that may not be comfortable. What's the role of the dealer? How can we build to order in a timely way? Should our divisions be autonomous on the Net, or should we move to develop a consolidated strategy?"

The guiding vision for the eConsumer Group, which falls under the auspices of the larger Consumer Connect Group, is to become the first automobile manufacturer capable of replicating (or approximating) the build-to-order business model that rocketed Dell Computer to the forefront of the PC industry. It strives to emulate Dell in spirit, even though building a vehicle to order is something that the company will do only if the specific car or truck doesn't already exist somewhere in the factory-to-dealer channel. Lead times in auto manufacturing are simply too long to do build-to-order service for every customer.

To encourage a build-to-order framework and to ensure that Ford has a commanding online presence, the Internet team must coordinate the efforts of technology and marketing employees not just within Ford but at all the newer additions to the Ford family -- brands such as Jaguar, Volvo, Mazda, and Aston Martin. Ibsen's group is supposed to serve as a central support resource for all of the brands. But from the beginning, the brands chafed at any interference from Ibsen's crew. "Their feeling was that they were so unique, and that anything that was good for the parent company was bad for their individual identity," says Sanabria. Even as of last fall, the Aston Martin site, for example, made no mention of Ford's stake in the company.

"We understand what it takes to turn a large ship," says Ibsen, 43, who spearheads the Internet effort at Ford. "It's a huge challenge." But that's where Ibsen's giant-steps strategy comes into play. He's wasted no time in establishing himself as Ford's Internet thought leader. A native of Iceland, he started at the company in 1996 after earning his MBA from the University of Texas at Austin. For about a year, he worked on a project to help Ford dealers reengineer their sales and service processes. In 1997, he became the first Ford employee to be assigned full-time to marketing and sales strategies on the Internet. The next year, Ibsen began building the Internet and new-media team, and shortly thereafter started launching applications that let buyers find nearby dealers, get price quotes on any package of options, get financing approval in as little as one hour, and browse used-vehicle inventories. Three years after joining Ford, Ibsen was promoted to VP of the eConsumer Group. "I've never seen a career track like it before," says Cornellier. "But I've never met anyone like Thor before."