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| Howard
Kennerd |
In
a bid to leverage the increasing demand for their UPS (uninterrupted
power supply) products, Emerson Network Power plans to set
up a 24x7 call centre at its Thane office. Laying special
emphasis on the after-sales service as a focus area for the
Asia-Pacific region, the company hopes to go live with the
project in October 2002.
This effort comes in the wake of a 15 percent growth in its
services market in India. “None of the countries in the
Asia-Pacific region have registered such a constant or significant
growth,” says Howard Kennerd, vice president, global
services, Emerson Network Power.
The company’s service contracts are governed by a Service
Level Agreement (SLA), which are customised on a case-to-case
basis and are largely dependent on the volume of sales. With
a staff of about 325 people across the country, Emerson’s
sales and service network consists of four zonal offices and
five regional offices with a manufacturing unit in Thane.
It has a distribution network of over 50 business partners
and 800 resellers across India. “The basic challenge,
faced by the service sector, is to educate customers in terms
of a potential loss in their revenues in the event of a downtime
in operations,” says Kennerd.
The Indian government’s open market policy has facilitated
Emerson’s initiatives to set a full-fledged manufacturing
unit-cum-service centre. The basic difference is that in China
the products are considered to be third-party products due
to stringent government laws and a less regularised set up.
“Our Chinese market represents more of a foreign ownership
and our legal entity in India puts us at a better advantage
for expansion in the market,” says Kennerd.
Comparing the Chinese and the Indian markets, he says that
the Chinese market is more pronounced in terms of volume of
sales, but due to their stringent laws, provision of after-sales
service is not as convenient as it is in India. The general
mindset of any customer before buying a product would be to
check out the complete after-sales service. India has at a
better edge due to sound knowledge of technology. “In
terms of customer penetration in China it is only about 30
to 40 percent, but in India it would amount to a whopping
90 percent,” says Kennerd.
Having said that, the unavailability of reliable power services
in many parts of India has made the Indian market a critical
space for them.
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