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Hyundai Motor India has in a strategic move used the current slowdown in the automobile market to restructure its sales organisation, tweak its marketing strategy and offer multi-skilling opportunities to its executives.
The auto maker expects continuous investments in people and processes will pay dividends not just in the current depressed market conditions but also when the market is ready to zoom, Hyundai’s Director for Finance and Corporate Affairs, R. Sethuraman, told Business Line .
New structure
The company kicked off 2013 by restructuring its sales organisation. As per the new structure, one new zone and several new regions were carved out for better management. After this exercise, there are a total of five zones and 13 regional offices.
More zones and more regional offices will help us reach out to customers faster and serve them more efficiently, he said. “Being as close to the customer in any market independent of the market conditions is a huge advantage,” he said.
Job rotation
Another initiative recently undertaken by the company was the job rotation system. Under this system, executives performing the same work for four continuous years were considered for other functions but within the same divisions.
About 14 per cent of the total number of executives have been part of the exercise. Before allocating the new roles, the individual’s competency, aptitude and past performance were taken into consideration. The employees were also given the option to choose the new roles they wanted.
Sethuraman said such an initiative which has now been made mandatory is expected to check attrition and bring in freshness to an individual’s job.
“We could discover newer talent, newer leaders for tomorrow through this exercise,” he said.
Market Share up
Interestingly, Hyundai, despite registering a fall in sales last month, has increased its market share.
Sethuraman said that this was because Hyundai was de-growing at a much slower rate than the passenger vehicle market. The same phenomenon has positively impacted market leader Maruti Suzuki too which, despite registering a fall in sales, has seen its market share improve 8 per cent in February to almost 52 per cent.
“Hyundai’s market share has grown nearly 4 per cent to 21.2 per cent in February this year compared with the same time last year as our sales have de-grown at a far lower rate than competition.”
In February this year, the total passenger vehicle market decreased 24.5 per cent to 1,60,963 units while Hyundai witnessed a decline of only 7.6 per cent to 34,002 units in the domestic market.
In calendar year 2012, Hyundai grew 4.7 per cent to over three lakh vehicles in the domestic market.
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