Mercedes 2009 Annual Report Download - page 91

Management Report |Profitability |87
The car2go project shows how the smart car concept can be
further developed to provide a new form of urban mobility with
the help of efficient IT systems. Daimler’s IT organization was
the implementation partner for the concept. Among other activi-
ties, we developed the car2go back office and car2go commu-
nity portal specifically for this project.
In the area of data protection, our innovation project entitled
Enterprise Rights Management for Engineering has the goal of
giving our engineers access to development data irrespective
of system, location and time, while ensuring that this data, which
is important for our competitiveness, cannot be accessed by
third parties.
Innovative IT systems for sales. As the first automotive financial
services company worldwide, Mercedes-Benz Financial last year
developed an Apple iPhone application for personalized contract
administration, with assistance from our IT organization. This
allows our customers to make payments easily and conveniently,
to find the nearest Mercedes-Benz authorized agent, or to con-
tact customer service quickly and simply.
With the new dealer management system by the name of Autoline,
Daimler intends to increase the efficiency of the sales organiza-
tion and levels of customer satisfaction. Following a successful
start, Autoline is to be put into use at all the sales and service
centers in Germany in the coming years.
Central IT solution supports customs processes. We have
implemented a central IT platform for customs processes at the
Group which provides IT support for the processing of exports
from the European Union to other countries in line with applicable
customs regulations. The central platform makes these customs
processes highly efficient while ensuring that payments of cus-
toms duty relating to the import and export of vehicles are
minimized as far as possible.
Green IT initiative started. Green IT is intended to make a sig-
nificant contribution to the Daimler Group’s sustainability and
future success. In the year 2009, within the context of this initia-
tive we optimized the infrastructure of our data centers and
communication technology (LAN, WAN, telephony). We deployed
energy-saving computers and data-storage systems at our data
centers, as well as energy-efficient PCs, monitors and printers in
the offices. Green IT parameters are included in the balanced
scorecard so that the resource-preserving application of informa-
tion technology is understood as a process of continuous
improvement.