Global Information Technologies Evolution, E Godards, FORVIA CIO, May 2025
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Many thanks to our last recruit, Eric Godard, again in position as FORVIA CIO, his successor passed away aged 52 from a cancer last week …a tragedy.
Please find hereafter my notes and the presentation added to this post
Faurecia and Hella IT are now merged into a single organization
FORVIA (including Hella) IT cost are around 1,7% of sales, 450 M€ budget 2000 FTEs, in the lower range of big companies (1,6 to 2,8, median 2,1%). Same situation for headcounts
IT evolved from a service to finances to a support to business and is considered strategical by the CEO
The lesson learned from past innovations in IT: Start out of IT for quick experimentation but go back into IT to industrialize and maintain.
Cybersecurity has become a day-to-day threat, around 80% of emails received per day are spams, and up to 14% of current budget is spent for it, 9% for Forvia.
Forvia appointed a former top gun… French Airforce 4 stars General ( 5 is commander in chief of the army…) to manage security. He found that the company was not so prepared for crisis management and organized rehearsals
Awareness and behavior of all employees is key to prevent and react to attacks. Fake phishing mails are regularly sent to all employees who must do or redo a security training is they were caught.
New competencies,
it is not anymore writing specifications from a DEVelopment engineer and testing a Blackbox with the OPSerational engineer. Both are the same person !
Data scientist, a specialist to crush data … miilions
Prompt engineer, a person who knows perfectly to ask a question to AI
Virtual project teams, impossible to run a project without team members all around the world and connected
IT is becoming more a job of architect sharing with business needs and correspondence
No way to recruit engineers without offering possibility to work remote. 3 days’ work per week at the office is a good balance .
AI
Key point remains, to get data….
For example most of FORVIA key machines are connected with a huge number of data collected. IT enables predictive maintenance and raw material yield monitoring for minimum usage
Look at the HYPE curve in the presentation, after huge enthusiasm, FORVIA is in the low range , with frustration, but we start discovering some positives impacts. Great ideas and expectations, but not so easy to implement it. Anyhow any job of making analysis of data with sound reports is so easy and reliable with AI.
Some Examples of success:
Analysis of RFQ from customers
Review of legal contracts
40 to 60 people work specifically on AI
Mainly Architect to evaluate and test systems
User case related, close to business
Developer of Algorithms
Link to big US companies, Microsoft, Palantir… In reality we are bound to them, especially a company operating worldwide. There is no credible alternative today.
Conclusion: IT became a strategic partner of the CEO, but new techno takes time and budget to be mature
Cordialement, le secrétaire de For’ever
Pascal Mougin
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