This was easier said than done. In order to get activated in these areas, the company borrowed short-term funds for immediate investment at high rates of interest. The company's plans were to repay the same through a proposed GDR issue, a Swiss bonds issue, a public issue and a rights issue.

Just as the company was planning out the course of its funds mobilisation exercise, the stock market nose dived. The company found itself with substantial debt liabilities at high rates of interest. To make matters worse, the anticipated long-term funds had all too suddenly whizzed out of sight.

The problems had just begun. Sectionsof the employee-shareholders decided to file a petition with the Company Law Board alleging financial mismanagement in the company. The media also played up the issue, leading to a feeling of uncertainty and confusion amongst the company's executives, employees, stake-holders and associates.

Faced with this, managing director Ravi Jain decided to make a presentation to the company's senior executives as a first step in a bid to address the human resource problem. Further, the company top brass decided to initiate an exercise of reaching out to every executive through a regular mailer.

``There was an urgent need to put the record straight, boost sagging employee morale and underline inherent strengths of the company to tide over the crisis. Moreover the company's operations had acquired a national character due to strategic acquisition of units nationally and a system of internal communication as a binding force was the need of the hour,'' say sources in the company.

This exercise, which was startedlast year, has endeavoured to provide the executives first hand information with respect to aspects of the company as may frequently raise doubts in their minds and put in place a system of two way flow of information by encouraging the executives to seek clarifications on various corporate issues.

While this met an `internal need', it was felt that the morale issue had an intimate linkage with perception of external public as well. A need was felt to professionalise the management further and inculcate self improvement as a continuous process. Realising this need, Shaw Wallace constituted a management audit panel within the company to re-evaluate and carry out need based restructuring of business operations and business practices.

According to Jain, ``Owing to financial, industrial relations and regulatory problems, senior management has got very little time to provide a conceptual platform to business and profitability growth. Although we have achieved unprecedented production and sales volumes duringthe last three years, we feel an ongoing management audit with a clear focus on enhancing profitability and competitiveness of the 112 year-old company is critical for continued success.''

The audit panel is a permanent body encompassing a five year perspective at a given point of time. Headed by Philip A B Sargunar, senior vice president, the panel includes permanent representatives from marketing, manufacturing and finance. The panel addresses issues like operating costs and efficiencies in core and non-core businesses.

Recently Shaw Wallace also put into place a system of rearrangement of liquor activity with a view to optimise efficiency and achievement in the liquor operation. The new arrangement stipulates that zonal heads be empowered as key management resource and assigned responsibilities of the profit centre head.

In addition the arrangement identifies a clear state leader in those states where parallel streams of field staff are proposed. In such cases the state leader will have one streamdirectly under his control while the second stream will be managed through a regional sales executive.

Further, it has been decided to initiate cross movement of management personnel between liquor and beer with a view to enhance exposure leading to personality development and fresh business perspective. The southern region has also been bifurcated into two zones the south zone and the Deccan zone. The former comprises Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Pondicherry and the Andamans while the latter comprises Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

As remuneration is closely linked to overall satisfaction and motivation, Shaw Wallace had earlier this year brought on board Noble and Hewitt for a detailed review of the prevailing executive compensation structure for the purpose of making it more contemporary.

As per the recommendations of the consultants, the compensation structure has been upwardly revised. The company has also decided to relate performance to remuneration so that achievement is duly recognised andrewarded.

Through these moves, the company has recorded an unprecedented growth of 61 per vent in beer and 23 per cent in liquor during the period July 1997 to April 1998. The company has also shown good growth in the non-core areas.``A dedicated human resource is our biggest asset today. Not many companies could have survived such multi-pronged attacks from a combination of hostile strengths, the way we have done. I owe it to my people who despite challenges have managed to steer clear of the crisis,'' says Jain.