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know about the brand – but the reality is that customers deal with the people behind the brand , and who are running things .
What I observed is that clients want to have a personalised business experience as well and sometimes want to deal with a particular individual . We therefore , before anything else , needed to be sure that customers were comfortable and happy in dealing with any staff member in the company .
When I came into the company , founded by Mike Cox who had been running the business for more than 13 years , he was technically qualified and competent . Then , looking at myself and my own set of skills , being commercially qualified and competent , the immediate challenge for me was replacing someone with immense knowledge of the industry and the technical ability . This meant I could not hit the ground running in the business from the get-go .
This led to the re-evaluation of the company structure and what was required to take the company forward , while also catering to close the gaps Mike would leave when exiting completely . Any new structure was also required to be affordable and sustainable for the business .
Having identified the areas that needed focus , we introduced a production manager position to satisfy the product quality element as well as an additional sales manager . This was because on review of the structure it was identified that the existing team were more estimatorbased , which is vital in costing an order , but a lot of work was getting done without a skill set in the team to close the deals , which is really an essential part of the process .
We have now implemented a system in the process from receiving an enquiry to producing and delivering the order , where the new team ensures that primarily we live up to the customer standard that we all developed together that includes things like categorised quoting and set timelines to meet . The new structures also offer individual and collective incentives to the staff . I could go so far as to say we have the biggest and best sales team as far as ‘ duct shops ’ go in KZN .
BB : What , if any , considerations have been made in terms of your product offerings ? PM : We have looked at all of the existing products that we have , and we have also had to diversify a bit by considering what is happening in the industry overall . The pandemic conditions too played a role where we have developed a new standalone HEPA virus filtration unit which purifies the air as our innovative response in supporting the global efforts to halt Covid-19 .
We have recently developed four air handling units ( AHU ) by retro-fitting shipping containers to supply these to two Covid-19 field hospitals in KZN . It is through this development that we have realised that we actually have the cabapility to develop AHUs as a product that we now intend to offer .
We have reconsidered products the company either used to make in the past and discontinued because there wasn ’ t a big enough market or demand , or , if it was taking too long to get those products off the ground . We have then looked at if and how these can fit into to the current environment . We are also now producing what we call low leakage doors and metro doors because there is a definite demand for these products in plant rooms as companies want to secure their equipment . We have also started producing weather-resistant steel louvres again .
Naturally , going forward , we will continue to look at our offerings and what new products we can introduce .
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RACA Journal I February 2021 www . hvacronline . co . za