GE Capital Imitating Consumer App Ecosystem

GE getting into the software business focusing on the customer. Aivars Lode avantce

GE Capital Imitating Consumer App Ecosystem

GE Capital is speeding up its application development processes to support parent companyGeneral Electric Co.GE -3.37%’s overall reconfiguration. In the process, it’s looking more like a developer of consumer applications. “Technology solutions are a key contributor to how we envision adding value to our customers, and is a big focus for us,” Martha Poulter, CIO of GE Capital, told CIO Journal during a telephone interview.

GE is undergoing a big restructuring, paring back many of its higher-margin financing activities and investing in its classic industrial businesses. Meeting with the Journal’s Dennis Berman at Davos on Friday, GE vice chairman John G. Rice said that over the next three years the company expects its industrial businesses to contribute 70% of operating profits, with the remainder coming from its banking business.

GE Capital will continue providing financing for large-scale projects, purchases of heavy machinery, and leasing for automotive fleets and airplanes. According to Ms. Poulter, GE Capital is using rapid development and deployment processes to create new applications as value-adds for GE customers, much in the same way that consumer technology companies develop new apps at mind-boggling speeds.

GE Capital’s developers are developing applications to help customers in the sectors — energy, aviation and health care – where GE is focusing its efforts. “We’re scaled in lock step with the industrial parent strategy,” said Ms. Poulter.

Ms. Poulter says that continuous delivery – the next generation of agile delivery – is allowing her team to deliver new applications “at market speed.” Ms. Poulter says GE is using cloud-like architectures to fully automate deployment, and using software rather than humans to check software code.

Agile delivery forces developers and other stakeholders to produce software code quickly – sometimes as often as daily – and then submit it for review. It contrasts with traditional application development methodology where developers demonstrate their product only once all the code has been written, usually in three-month cycles. “We’re able to deliver every day as opposed to at the end of three months,” she said. In other words, they operate like someone developing forApple Inc.AAPL -1.82%’s App Store or Google Inc.GOOG -3.13%’s Play store.

GE Capital has developed an application allowing companies that lease automobile fleets from GE Capital to view mileage, fuel usage, mapping and other information in real time, helping them manage their fleets more efficiently and thus extract more value from their relationship with GE.

Other applications developed by Ms. Poulter’s developers can give businesses greater insight into the available inventory from their largest suppliers – information GE can share because it finances that inventory across a large number of retailers. The application gives smaller companies access to data that can help them compete, especially in a fragmented market where there hasn’t been a lot of transparency. The goal, says Ms. Poulter, is to “expose data they may not have access to through other means.”

Application development makes GE Capital a more attractive partner, and it also helps customers get in better financial shape. Put in its simplest terms, “if they’re successful, they pay us back,” Ms. Poulter said.