By Alan Radding
It's New Year's Eve, 2005, and Dave is toasting the auto industry. Three cheers for GM-BMW/VW-Toyota and DaimlerChrysler/Honda! Dave used to envy the top-tier consulting companies, elite firms with their fat auto industry strategy and technology consulting contracts. The big automakers devoured enormous amounts of consulting services to support their multibillion-dollar technology habits. But, located far from Detroit, Dave knew that his firm, excellent as it was, would never have a chance to gorge itself at the auto industry consulting trough.
Then, back in 2000, everything had changed, when Covisint — the on-line auto supplier exchange created by DaimlerChrysler, Ford, and General Motors — was born. No, GM and Ford were not calling Dave, but obscure auto industry suppliers — machine shops, component assemblers, fabricators of this and that, companies he had never heard of — started coming out of the proverbial woodwork, slowly at first and then in a big rush, to request sophistic
