How IT does business at Eastman

In the context of performance film, nesting is the process of getting the patterns onto the cutting board—and ultimately on the film—as efficiently as possible. Nesting leads not only to optimal use of film, but also to better aesthetics in a car. Eastman has come up with a set of unique techniques for the automotive aftermarket.

The service boosts product sales, and product sales lead more people to the service. But Noseda insists the service works just as well with competitor products, and it can be seen as an independent offering. “The magic of this is to have patterns of cars as quickly as possible when they come into the market,” says Noseda. “You must produce them fast and with the highest quality. To create patterns, we use patent-pending algorithms, analytics, artificial intelligence, and other techniques. Imagine a Ferrari comes in and the owner wants paint protection film. The dealer goes into a system to find the right cut and the car isn’t there or the quality of the cut isn’t exact. That isn’t good. We do things to make that information available very quickly and with really high quality.”

Growing the business

In the beginning, there were questions around where the digital business would sit within the company. But now it runs smoothly within the IT department, which makes the digital products organization unusual.

“We operate like a start-up,” says Horan. “We have steering team meetings to get input from all parts of the company, but the voice of customers is the one that’s most important.”

Noseda says the digital products organization is growing along various strategic horizons. One is to increase the number of subscribers, and this is mostly a matter of geographical expansion. The services have done very well in North America and the business is now targeting other markets. The other horizons are about increasing capabilities to further support existing customers.

Noseda estimates that around 80% of his role is what other companies would call traditional IT: providing cyber security, business intelligence, and everything else needed to support the organization. When he’s not doing all that, he runs the digital products organization with a full staff including people responsible for communications, customer service, and product design and engineering.