Pune-based commercial vehicle maker Force Motors is re-aligning and strengthening its overall business structure in a bid to prepare the company to what Prasan Firodia, managing director of the company prefers to call the ?New Force?. The company has split its businesses into three separate divisions with independent teams to look into it. It will have a commercial vehicle division, a personalised vehicle division and tractors. This comes at a time when the company is preparing to enter the passenger car market with the launch its sports utility vehicle (SUV) by end of May.
The company has roped in IT service leaders Wipro and IBM to help it strengthen its front-end activities and IT systems.
Firodia says he wants to see Force Motors as a ?dominant player in the light commercial vehicle (LCV) market in the country? and believes that the need of the hour is to shift the company?s ideology from being a ?product-centric to market-centric? organisation and strengthen front-end operations.
?We are strong at engineering of products, which I can proudly say are reliable and robust and hold a dominant place in their respective segments. But we need to do a lot on the front-end and we have already started that,? Firodia said. ?We have signed up with Wipro for dealer management system (DMS) for four years at a cost of Rs 24 crore. Under this, Wipro will manage all our front-end activity, from test drives to after-sale service report, inventory report and giving dealers a day-to-day report on his operations,? he said.
? This shows that we are giving it out to professional companies to handle it and not making a few in our office to look into it,? Firodia said. Moreover, the company has appointed an independent agency to train its dealers and even conduct regular audits in a bid to keep the supply chain on toes.
On the product side, Force Motors is looking at re-engineering its product spectrum to comply with the emission norms and customer needs, in addition to getting into newer segments and expanding dealership network.
The company sees huge opportunity in the van segment in the country, starting from seven to 32 seats. ?Till 28 seaters, we are looking at monocoque body (using the exterior to support the structural body), something the industry does not have at the moment,? he added.
The company is working on a smaller van on its Traveller platform for personal application, re-engineering its Trax, other than expanding its Trump range and tractors.
?The existing products are compliant to current emission norms and power requirements. But going ahead, on these platforms we need to get new technology to comply with Euro IV and V and re-align our product spectrum to emission norms compliance and customer,? Firodia explains.