Automotive Industry — Dr Robert Arvedson

LESS IS MORE

In today’s competitive environment it is a must to ensure the contents, structures, processes, knowledge, skills and attitude are in place to identify and remove any bottlenecks at all levels in the distribution channel, i.e. at Manufacturer/OEM, National Sales Company/Importer and at Retailer level, to ensure maximum efficiency and effectiveness.

With all good intentions, new and incremental initiatives and programmes are created, often to drive sales volume and/or enhance brand experience at point of sales. Retailers end up turning away from the customer and spend more time on administration than they do on selling cars — the bottle neck is evident.

There is an urgent need to:

remove complexity in the distribution channel
focus on what is important
prioritise and improve the speed, depth and sustainability of project implementations

whilst at the same time understanding when «project implementation» in reality means «change management».

HAVE THE RIGHT NETWORK IN THE RIGHT PLACES

Retail Network Development (RND) is the discipline which provides answers to questions around the physical brand representation in the market and the qualitative standards linked to these, e.g.:

What are our business objectives? E.g. volume, market share, segment share, customer satisfaction, profitability.
What types of sales & service representations do therefore need?
How many retail partners (dealers) and service partners do we need and where? Why?
How must the network develop over time? What are the milestones?
How can dealers best represent the brand?
What level of competence (knowledge, skills and attitude) do we need in the network?
How can dealer profitability be ensured? Dealers must be able to re-invest into their business and earn enogh money to afford looking after the customer.
etc.

It makes sense to divide RND into four logical clusters, where each line item in each cluster has its own objectives, strategy and pragmatic implementation plan. None of these individual clusters and sub-areas can live in isolation, but always form part of the overall RND strategy:

KEEP IT SIMPLE AND MAKE IT WORK

Driven by the need of automotive manufacturers, my work is mainly focused around Revenue Performance Consulting at strategic level, Sales Performance Improvement and Retail Network Development, such as:

Sparring partner to senior executives at all levels in the distribution channel (OEM/Region/Import/Retail)
Identifying and removing the blockers in the distribution channel through improved structures, contents, processes and mindset
Development of new and/or validation of existing objectives, strategies and implementation plans – with a clear focus on achieving the company objectives through pragmatic implementation. Mostly there is no need to develop new content, but to validate and improve what is already available and ensure the client can finally benefit from investments already made
Task management and sounding board within a work group as an additional experienced resource
Facilitation of workshops and round table discussions
Sales Performance Management
Retail Network Development