GE Information Services (UK), the London division of the Rockville, Maryland-based data communications and teleprocessing company of the same name, is to be the centre of the newly formed Trade and Transport Group, in what GEIS describes as a major realignment of iTsRbusiness strategy – in other words, the rare event of an American firm allowing its European arm to make independent decisions and giving it the capital to finance those decisions. The reason for this internationalism is of course the looming of 1992 and the Single European Market, when GEIS expects much the same will happen as did in the US when internal trading was deregulated: thousands of bankruptcies among transport providers, greater demands made by the client in terms of delivery speed, lower transportation costs – GEIS forecasts that these will fall by at least 20% in Europe – and information regarding consignments, especially in the shipping business. GEIS sees its market as comprising all participants of the transportation chain, from manufacturers such as ICI and Daimler-Benz, shippers, airlines and government authorities such as Customs & Excise. Its aim is to integrate parties, speed up the flow of information, and make this flow more transparent. In this connection, GEIS announced its Equipment Management System, a computer-based system for container management. Developed with the help of an IBM team in London and the advice of the container management operation GEM, EMS is intended to offer shipping lines and agents the ability to control and optimise global container traffic by making containers available when and where required at a low cost.
Cash for acquisitions
At present EMS consists of four integrated modules for tracking, billing, contracts and maintenance and repair: a forecasting feature, obviously central to the optimisation that GEIS lays claim to, is yet to come. Real-time information on inter-port movements and equipment disposition, with automatic calculation and billing of the costs involved, is the essence of what EMS offers at the moment, and this, says GEIS, will become a business necessity for shipping companies of the future. Accordingly, GEIS intends to become the number one player in information services for the trade and transport industry in time for 1992, and has been given the money to make alliances and acquisitions to that end – a co-ordinated market agreement has already been made with BCT International, owned by Philips and a formative Dutch software house, covering the provision of services and products to the air cargo market – in the belief that the information services market will double from its present $2,000m. Meanwhile, GEIS and its competitors will have to wait another couple of years for 1992, which is steadily acquiring a god-like presence in their industry, before the full potential of their plans will be tested, in much the same way as Electronic Data Interchange developers must also wait. And as Chris Toone, general manager of the UK arm observed, the only people making money from EDI at the moment are the consultants talking about it.
