That's a potential revenue generator in itself, notes Preston, whose background is in computer science. "People will pay a premium to get what they want sooner," he says.

The Internet will give Visteon's aftermarket customers, including dealerships, parts distributors, and consumers, the ability to buy from the company online. Consumers will be able to use the Web to order products from Visteon, such as the company's new rear-seat video entertainment system. "The Internet is a zero-cost infrastructure and common platform to do business with consumers," Preston says. Visteon now does very little direct-to-consumer business over the Internet, but expects that to change in the next year.

The Internet also promotes cross-selling opportunities, says Bent. For example, in connection with its rear-seat entertainment system, Visteon is talking with Nintendo about the possibility of selling videos and Nintendo games on Visteon's Web site.

The Internet will also help Visteon enter new markets. For instance, Visteon has used its expertise in car interiors and sound systems to develop state-of-the-art theater seats for Ford's Henry Ford Theatre in Dearborn, Mich. More such developments are on the drawing board, and the Net will provide an efficient and effective marketing platform for those efforts, says Bent.

While consumers are a target, the potential pool of new customers from small businesses is enormous, says Bent. "Many small businesses want to purchase with a credit card," he says. "It's a smaller-volume sale, but we can reach customers who we never knew were out there before." Associated with that effort will be the demise of electronic data interchange in aftermarket sales over the next two to three years, as EDI is displaced by Web commerce, Bent predicts.

Visteon's goals for its business-to-business Internet activities include offering self-serve order tracking and, eventually, the ability to do more build-to-order business, much like Dell's direct model, Bent says. Still, the most important factor in Visteon's growth will be increasing sales to automakers. Sales to original equipment manufacturers accounted for about 92% of Visteon's $18 billion revenue this year. Right now, approximately 90% of those sales are to other Ford companies. But the goal is for non-Ford sales to grow to about 20% by 2002. And the key to that is Visteon's ongoing effort to migrate its IT systems away from Ford.

One area of E-business in which Visteon has already made great strides is the supply chain. "Supplies are our biggest cost," Bent says. Visteon spent about $8.5 billion this year on the supplies and materials used to produce the $18 billion worth of auto parts it sold. By moving Visteon's supply-chain and procurement processes to the Internet, so a wider selection of suppliers can bid for Visteon business online, potential savings are huge. "Even if we can bring down our supply costs a little, we have a big bottom-line improvement," says Bent.

Earlier this year, Visteon launched an online effort focused on getting bids from a variety of manufacturers for printed circuit boards, which are used in many Visteon integrated automotive systems. At the end of the online bidding process--also called a "reverse auction"--Visteon purchased $145 million worth of boards "at substantial savings" compared with the traditional request-for-proposals process, says David Smith, a principal at A.T. Kearney.

The auction was part of an "overall study to evaluate a number of tools in the E-commerce space," says Smith, who worked with Bent on the project. "The auction marked the first big step in Visteon leveraging the Internet as they form a separate company."

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Photos by Andrew Sacks

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