Unified India Ltd., one of the leading dealers of BELCO, is presently facing the problem of customer dissatisfaction. It ranked third in 1999-2000, with its turnover of HCV’s and LCV’s (around 2,500 vehicles). 2000-2001 was the year of dramatic changes in the automobile industry, creating work pressure at all levels for both, BELCO and its dealers. U.I.L could have achieved the turnover of 2,300 vehicles with extraordinary efforts.
U.I.L. is a public limited company, headed by the president (supposed to be the company’s chief executive). The company’s business approach is based on its conventional theory of centralized control and extremely conservative budgets. Its conservative approach has also affected the work culture and has made its employees pessimistic.
The company has not been very successful in encashing its long standing ties with the top bosses of BELCO. It has been a perceived assessment that the organizational structure of the company is creating problems in the marketing approach. A few technocrats are of the opinion that the company should strengthen its ‘passenger car division’ and take utmost advantage of its market image.
Few of the younger employees strongly believe that some obsolete personalities have created a lot of confusion for safeguarding their own interest. The company’s president has blamed the policies and programmes of the parent company. Delay in vehicle supply, inefficient information systems, frequent price hikes, negligence of the parent company’s executives, lack of integrated promotional efforts and inadequate rapport with the government authorities are the major factors attributing to the company’s overall failure during the last year.
The Chairman of the company is in a real quandary today. He is not able to decide on the change hi organization needs. More than the perceptions, he would like to believe in hard facts of the company’s past and potential performances. He has been trying to decide whether he should prefer qualitative change to the quantitative ones. The further confusion is whether a decision taken with qualitative assumptions would certainly give quantitative results in both the short-run and long-run.
A crystal clear visualization of the problem areas is the need of the time. Unfortunately, very few of the company’s soldiers are aware of this situation.
Q.
Decide the priorities clearly and offer suggestions.
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