TRAVAILS OF A TRAINING MANAGER
Ashwin Kumar, who had recently joined System, as a training manager, was feeling uneasy at the end of his first meeting with Pesu Shroff, the managing director of the company.
Systems was a ten-year old unit employing 300 people. It had a turnover of Rs. 25 crore the previous year. The company traded in several products – both domestic and imported. Nearly 80 percent of its turnover came from selling electronic component products which were assembled locally from imports of semi knocked – down kits. The landed cost of its imports was about Rs. 10 crore last year. The products had an assured demand in the country, with smuggled goods from Taiwan and Korea providing whatever little competition there was. The company had been operating in a seller’s market for years and, as a result, most of its activities were production oriented rather than market oriented.
Early during the current financial year, the Government of India had announced, as a part of its economic liberalization strategy, several policy measures which made imports costlier. All imports had to be financed by exports – there were restrictions on margin money and interest rates for working capital had shot up at one stroke. With little export income in its account, Systems had no choice but to discontinue importing SKD kits.
The company management had three option before it. First, to build up its domestic trading activity rapidly ; second, to assemble at least a few of the component products from raw materials sourced locally and third, pursue after-sales service aggressively both to generate revenue in the short run and to establish an enduring client-base for the company’s products in the long run.
Invariably, this meant that the survival of Systems depended on how quickly it could train its people – beginning from a handful of sales engineers – to become market –