About Eicher Motors
Eicher Motors, was founded in 1982 to manufacture a range of reliable, fuel-efficient commercial
vehicles of contemporary technology. The unit manufactures and markets commercial vehicles with
Gross Vehicle Weight (GVW) ranging from 5-25 tons.
Today, Eicher Motors is one of the leading manufacturer of commercial vehicles in India with a 33%
market share in the 7T-11T segment. The success and growth of this unit is a result of various customer-
driven strategies. The manufacturing facility is situated in Central India – Pithampur, Madhya Pradesh.
Eicher Motors has stepped into the Heavy Commercial Vehicle segment with its state-of-the-art HCV,
the "Eicher 20.16", the first commercial vehicle designed and developed indigenously.
Eicher Motors functions through a strong three-tier service network consisting of authorised
distributors, service centres and company trained private mechanics. The vehicles are sold and serviced
through a network of over 576 Authorized Contact Points all over India, supported by service centres
and over 4500 company trained private mechanics, who are close at hand on all major highways
throughout India to provide initial "first aid" to the vehicles if required.
In 1986, Eicher Motors entered into a technical and financial collaboration with Mitsubishi Motor
Corporation of Japan to manufacture the Canter range of vehicles. The technical assistance agreement
with Mitsubishi ended in March ‘94 after successful transfer of technology and on achieving total
indigenisation with only a few parts sourced globally.
Eicher Motors has acquired formidable expertise in designing and developing commercial vehicles. It has
a world-class R&D centre manned by a team of brilliant engineers and equipped with latest Computer
Aided Design (CAD) and Computer Aided Engineering facilities like NASTRAN, FEM analysis packages.
Leveraging its in-house expertise, this unit has successfully developed a wide range of commercial
vehicles to meet varying customer needs. The product range includes Trucks : Eicher 10.50, Eicher 10.75,
Eicher 10.90, Eicher 11.10, Eicher 20.16 & 30.25; Buses: Eicher Skyline, Eicher Cruiser and Eicher School
Bus range of buses. Besides the basic models, it offers over 85 models of ready-to-use custom-built
vehicles for various specialised applications. Eicher Motors’ products have been well accepted in the
market. This is also demonstrated by significant sales of its commercial vehicles in export markets where
the company competes with reputed international brands.
I. Sales Organisation
On a broader level Sales Organisation for Eicher is structured (in order of reporting) as following:
In Parallel the marketing team has Product managers responsible for different products of the company.
In the sales organization some of the key structural points are as following:
Territory Manager and Area managers for different products might be different also. For example Eicher makes 3 kinds of product lines –
o Light Truckso Heavy Trucks &o Buses
So territory manager and Area managers will be different for each of these 3 products. But Regional manager will be same and All India sales head will be same.
Besides the above mentioned structure there are support staff also which handle the following work areas
o After Sales
SALES MANAGMENT
o Repairs
II. Territory Allocation
Following are the steps of how EML defines its territories:
III. Compensation Structure
Compensation ranges for various position in EML are as broadly as following:
Territory Manager – 7-8 lacs per annum.
Area Manager – 12-15 lacs per annum
Regional Manager - 20 -25 lacs per annum
All India Sales Head – 30-40 lacs per annum
Then there are bands for salary decisions. For example employees who are senior but not MBA
have higher salaries because of their overall experience.
Structure
Variable salary is 10%
Rest all is fixed
Basic salary is very less – only 10%. Rest all is a flexi structure where in you can declare
the balance salary under various heads to save tax. But note that this flexi salary is fixed
only and it is called flexi because it is reimbursed by employees as payment against
various heads.
Then there are incentive plans which are variable and linked to performance.
IV. Performance Evaluation System
Overview
Introduced in 1977 and Reviewed in 1979, 1981,1984, 1986 & 1991
Executives :
o Reviewed by Career Development Groups (CDG)
o Under Annual Development Review (ADR) Process
o At the beginning of the year target / KRAs (Key Result Areas) are set
Features of Present Appraisal System for Executives :
o Customer Orientation
Expectations of internal & external Customers
Review will be based on on the job and off the job development
requirement.
It is measured whether an employee has achieved their annual targets or
not. This is a performance based evaluation and it is about 10% of salary.
o Emphasis on Potential development
Acceptances of more responsibilities
Individual Potentiality
Following 6 Points Rating Factors are used for evaluation of Non-Executives:
1. Sincerity and willing to work
2. Intelligence and Grasping power
3. Knowledge
4. Presentation & Clarity of expression
5. Dynamism, Association, Attendance & Initiative
6. Discipline
Based on the above factors an employee’s performance can fall into 3 levels:
o Level1: Meeting the KRA
o Level2: More than what was defined in the KRA
o Level3: Extraordinary performance entitling to promotions, bonuses and pay
hikes.
(If an employee fails to reach Level1 then the rating is 0 and no hike is given.)
Competency Measurement: Every role and position in EML has a set defined level of
competency. Here again there are levels defined of how one exhibits competencies in
comparison to the expected competency for that position. Those who exhibit higher
competencies are given a monthly bonus ranging from 5K to 15K.
Assessment Centre:
EML started this in 1984 to undertake promoting staff to executive positions
V. Training and Development
EML conducts both internal and external training programs for its employees. Following are the
various types of training that are available to EML employees:
Behavioral Training - for all level
Functional Training - for all level
Potential Related Training - for all level
Multi-Skill Training - workmen & Jr. staff
Training for Dealers - to deal with customers
Training Schools - Skill development
International Exposure - Sr. Level Executives to establish TQM
Following data shows the feedback of EML employees for the trainings they receive:
VI. Recruitment and Induction
EML does not hire; but VE Commercial Vehicles and Royal Enfield are employers. They offer
exciting career opportunities in manufacturing, materials, product development, marketing,
legal and taxation, administration, internal audit, IT, personnel, quality control and assurance
for entry level and experienced candidates.
At Eicher Motors Ltd. Recruitment is done via two methods –
1. Lateral Recruitment where experienced people from the Auto Industry they come.
2. In sales fresher are hired who are Engineer & MBAs. The positions are generally filled by
conducting campus recruitment drives across India - in management and engineering
colleges. Engineers are hired as graduate engineer trainees. During a nine month long
training program, candidates are given on the job training and after successful
completion; the candidate is inducted in the company as an employee
Induction process is not very elaborate –
Management graduates are hired as management trainees and put through a
customised induction program.
During the training phase, which typically lasts for six months, a candidate is put
through various business units in order to understand Eicher's various business
processes.
I. Channel Environment & Strategy
Channel environment at EML is exclusive owing to the fact that dealerships are also exclusive;
meaning that a channel will sell only EML vehicle and that too of a category, for example, a
channel will sell only trucks made my EML. So it is a dedicated channel much like cars. As a
result there is no conflict of interest because the dealer is selling only vehicles of Eicher.
The challenge is to find a dealer who is willing to be a part of such an exclusive channel.
Exclusivity is also a barrier considering not many dealers would want to commit to just one
company/channel. Secondly it involves a heavy capital investment.
II. Channel Structure & Design
EML has three types of channel structure:
1. 3-S structure
2. 2-S Channel
CHANNEL MANAGMENT
The 2-S channel is used if there is a very big territory and adequate no. of vehicles are not
sold but vehicles are supplied in those areas then only service and spare is required (The
dealer is not authorized to sell).
3. 1-S Channel – These are retailers who sell spares only.
While selecting channel members following characteristics are considered by EML:
Years in business
Size of dealer
Growth and profit record
Cooperativeness and reputation
Location
Note: These are ideal parameters but EML does not strictly go by these
III. Managing the channel members and conflict
Conflict is normal among channels as each member of the channel has a specific goal that is
generally unique from the channel member preceding or following it. The goal of the
manufacturer is different than the goal of the distributor/retailer. Resources are generally
money and each channel member is trying to maximize their efficiency and many times that
means reducing costs for the individual channel member even if that means increased cost for
other channel members.
At EML there are mainly 2-3 types of conflict that happen between channel members.
One is on discount part and is normally taken care by penalties.
Then there are territory infringement leading to conflicts. These are again handled via
penalties.
The penalties can be monitory and sometimes warning is enough also. The company
strict decisions in case of conflicts like territory infringement. For discount related
conflicts it is difficult to be very strict as those are not easy to prove.
Some other management principles used to resolve conflicts are as following:
o Diplomacy
o Mediation
o Arbitration
o Managing and motivating channel members
o Partner relationship management (PRM) for long-term partnerships
o Software available to coordinate members
o Check channel performance of:
Sales
Customer delivery
Promotion and training
Customer service
IV. Evaluation of Channel Members
EML maintains dealer scorecard. It has different types of head like market share target, sales
target etc. Then there are sales dealer audit scores. These scores are sent on a regular basis
from by Area offices and are finally compared on national level.
Then there are Gallop survey scores.
Gallop is an international organisation which helps companies conduct customer
engagement surveys. So such surveys are run and numbers are awarded based on the
survey results obtained. These are conducted every year.
Second type of survey is Dealer engagement survey which measures how much are the
dealers engaged to EML.
All these score lead to a final balance scorecard which is used for final evaluation. All these
results are than tallied on all India level and annual rewards are also given out to top
performers.
Problem with Channel Management:
The biggest problem with EML channel management was at the time of selecting a
channel member. EML really lacks lot of big dealers who have good amount of money
(and this kind of business does require heavy capital investment and is a long term
business from returns point of view).
EML has lot of small dealers, in the sense that they don’t have much money. So in that
way the channel selection is pretty weak or poor at EML. They would make anyone a
dealer and their criteria’s were not too high for the selection.
Tata being the number one attracts most of the dealers and no one want to be
associated with number 2 or 3 player.
To get bigger dealer EML is not a in a position to offer a bigger carrot, i.e., higher
incentives and dealer discounts.
So that resulted in everything – Poor channel selection leads to poor sales. Poor sales
lead to poor growth and smaller market share. As channel is ultimately the last end
which interacts with the customer, so if that is not strong losses are bound to happen.