InformationWeek

December 21/28, 1998

People Person: Gary Reiner

GE's Gary Reiner oversaw Web procurement and sales-force automation initiatives, but finding and retaining top IT talent was a priority

By Bob Violino

ven by a CIO's standards, this has been a busy year for Gary Reiner, senior VP and CIO at General Electric Co. and second runner-up for InformationWeek's Chief of the Year for 1998.

For instance, GE did "a ton of work" converting and testing code for year 2000 compliance, Reiner says--and is auditing many of its major suppliers to ensure that they're year 2000 compliant.

Among other initiatives, the company rolled out a notebook-based sales-force automation system in many of its businesses, began a program to remotely monitor the performance of equipment it sells, and launched a service based on electronic data interchange and inventory-management software that lets customers manage their inventories of GE products. It also settled on a single vendor--still unannounced--for its desktop computers, and decided to standardize desktop software by the end of March.

Under Reiner's direction, GE also has continued to move much of its supplies procurement to the Internet and boost Web-based sales. The company bought about $1 billion worth of goods and supplies on the Internet this year, and GE expects to connect electronically with more than 2,500 of its largest suppliers through the GE Trading Process Network within the next few years.

One of the major advances this year was the successful deployment of an intranet procurement system at GE Lighting, which has streamlined the purchasing process and virtually eliminated paper transactions in GE Lighting's 20 plants.

Randy Rowe, a manager in GE's corporate initiatives group, says Reiner has made it clear that Internet technology will be used whenever and wherever it can allow the company to more efficiently procure supplies and cut costs. "He's always pushing us to find new and better ways to be competitive," Rowe says.

Reiner, who reports to chairman and CEO Jack Welch, joined GE as VP of corporate business development in 1991 from Boston Consulting Group. He was named CIO in April 1996.

Sallie Howell, manager of GE's Information Management Development program, says Reiner has focused much of his time on recruitment efforts. During the past year, the IM Development program expanded its IT-management curriculum and the network of colleges and universities from which it recruits IT people, increasing the number of IT professionals recruited from college campuses by 15% over the previous year.

Says Reiner: "By far the most important thing is having the best people around."

Return to "Chief Of The Year."