Kutner's appointment indicates that the reorganization includes plans to cut back on planned supply-chain and design-collaboration efforts to focus on procurement and supplier integration to automakers, AMR Research automotive analyst Kevin Prouty says. Rather than relying on Covisint, automakers are opting to expand their own private exchanges to collaborate with major suppliers. Covisint's primary money-maker is its auctions and sophisticated procurement efforts, which let automakers issue requests for suppliers to build particular parts, and contract management, which lets automakers manage their supplier relationships. Covisint will target smaller auto suppliers who cannot connect to the automakers' private exchanges directly, Prouty says. The move away from Covisint in some areas of the supply-chain process was evident before the shakeup. For example, GM and Ford Motor Co. have embraced a design-collaboration tool from EDS called e-Vis, which GM and Ford can run from behind their own firewalls.