CASESTUDY

AutoSpare public Ltd is an Age-old automobile industry involves in the manufacturing of engine Spare parts. They are highly valued among the customers as they are a monopoly in some of their parts. Most of the Indian Automobile leaders are the customers of Auto Spare to name a few TATA, Force Motors, M&M and Cummins, etc.

Auto spare has 3 manufacturing Unit and all of them are situated in 3 various places in Southern India and the management is been done from one of the Manufacturing plants located in Chennai. As most of the customers are located in the Northern and western regions of the country the marketing managers are spread in those places convenient to meet the customer. Only the VP Marketing and GM Marketing are working from the head office. They act as a link between the company and the marketing people as they communicate the targets to the marketing people and submit the reports, send by those people, to the higher authorities.

Mr.More, Mr.Mehta, Mr.Rajesh are the marketing team looking after the western region, from where more number of customers are operating. The Job profile of these people includes getting monthly requirements from the clients, mailing the same to the respective departments, looking after the supply whether the goods are reaching the customers as per schedule, and attending the customers in case of any quality issue regarding auto spare parts. And sending the weekly report consists of reports in detail about all the above-said things to the VP & GM Marketing.

In recent days the western region of Autospare is facing a different problem. Even though there is a slag in the Automobile industry being a monopoly Autospare doesn't face a problem as it gets a continuous schedule to supply from the customers. But the marketing department finds it very difficult to get the material from the plant and supply it to the needy customers. Most of the time it happens that the production itself was supposed to be stopped due to the non-availability of materials from Autospare.

The marketing team has to attend quality issues at least thrice a week. They have sent a number of reports regarding these issues but all at the vein, no improvement from the production side. The marketing executives were losing their good terms with the customers. Slowly the customers started to develop other sources for the parts manufactured by Autospare Pub Ltd. Still, they are finding it difficult to develop such sources as the raw material required is unique. In this situation, the CEO of Autospare visited the customers of the western region. Almost all the customers highlighted the quality as the main issue. And most of them also stated that Autospare fails to supply the products as per schedule most of the time.

As soon as he returned to head office he sent a mail to all the marketing executives in the western region claiming that:-

"The executives failed to maintain their rapport with that of customers.

• The sales in the western region are not up to the mark due to the irresponsive nature of the marketing department.
• Failed to check out whether the schedule is met or not.
• All the employees in the marketing department of the Western region including the territory head, along with GM and VP must give a detailed explanation about the issue."

He also demanded a detailed report, from Production VP, regarding Production and dispatch of products along with schedules received by the production department from the Marketing Department.

He also instructed HR Head to investigate the issue and submit the report and also suggest a reporting model that will avoid such an issue later.

Questions on this case study

1. Who is at fault in this case CEO or VP GM Marketing or Production Department or marketing people in the western region. Justify your answer. ( can make necessary assumptions if required)

2. Consider yourself as one of the marketing executives from the western region and frame a report as demanded by the CEO ( can make necessary assumptions if required)

3. If you are the HR Head how will you proceed for the investigation? what will be the reporting model that you will suggest to the CEO?