Published on February 11, 2022
Tata Power has predominantly been in the generation and transmission space. It is now building its B2C segment under the umbrella of new business services (NBS). The key products/solutions under the NBS vertical include rooftop solar, EV charging, home automation and energy service (ESCO). The NBS vertical is scaling up its workforce and wanted to understand how established players in the B2C segment, in the group, use systems, processes (including review processes) and KPIs to measure the effectiveness of its salesforce.
To assist Tata Power in its endeavours, Tata Business Excellence Group (TBExG) facilitated a best practice sharing session on January 25, 2022. Deba Ghoshal, VP & Head Marketing; Jogesh Jaitly, VP - Sales UPBG & Voltas Beko; and Chetak Malhotra, AGM - Market Activation from Voltas shared their practices on productivity monitoring for salesforce with Tata Power.
In the session, the Voltas team took the participants on a journey of the company’s history. Voltas’ Unitary Products Business Group pioneered the concept of air conditioning and refrigeration in India and have a series of first launches throughout its period of existence. The company is broadly structured into Engineering projects & Services and products business. The projects business is now classified into Infrastructure Projects Solutions (MEP, Water & Electrical Project Business) and International Operations Business Group (IOBG) and Engineering Service Business- Mining & Construction Equipment Division (MCED) and Textile Machinery Division (TMD). The products business is classified into UPBG which offers a comprehensive range of cooling solutions including air conditioners, commercial refrigeration products, air coolers and commercial air conditioners (CAC). Through a 50:50 joint venture with the Turkey based Arcelik Group, Voltas has forayed into home appliance products such as refrigerators, washing machines, microwave ovens and dishwashers. These products are sold under the brand Voltas Beko. The company is the market leader in domestic AC business in India.
In the session, the Voltas team emphasised on the importance of reach, distribution, and continuous re-visiting of its proposition as critical factors of success in a consumer business. They shared their product sales structure, sales administration structure, and approach with channel partners – general trade (distribution & dealers), modern trade, ecommerce, and key accounts (institutional). In view of the pandemic, Voltas also started its own webstore (https://voltaslounge.com/) to reach out to customers. The team further elaborated on KPIs, IT reviews, use of search engine optimisation and ensuring quality last mile connectivity with the customer and the store person, which Voltas refers to as ambassadors (VISA).
Tata Power found the learnings from the session useful for their purpose and would be evaluating the prospect of using them to improve its existing processes: -
1. Capability building of channel partners to be brand ambassadors (in line with the VISA model)
2. Adopting process KPIs for evaluating the performance of the entire sales team network
Participant Speak
We greatly appreciate the time and effort invested by the Voltas team to take us through their sales management process. It was a good learning experience to understand how other prominent players in the B2C segment measure people productivity and effectiveness of their vast sales network.
- Rashmikant, Head - Business Excellence, Tata Power