If you have been following my articles for a while now then you would have
encountered X many times by now and would be wondering ‘Who the heck is this X?’
X – An Introduction:
Imagine cold winters without a room heater to keep you warm
or hot summers without air-conditions to keep you cool and to keep your cool.
Hard to imagine isn’t it? Simple necessities of life like heat and light that
many take for granted in today’s world. But have you ever wondered who creates
that comfortable, welcoming environment in your homes or offices or shopping
malls and all other places that are an integral part of human habitation? The
answer is linked to Mechanical & Electrical (M&E) industry always.
Although this could mean an electrician operating out of his van or an AC
technician working out of his one man office or it could even mean a
multinational company with multi-billion £ turnover and thousands of employees offering you its world
class state-of-the-art services.
X is part of UK’s mechanical & electrical industry. The
company offers many services within the mechanical & electrical industry
sector including designing, building and project managing HVAC & Mechanical
services, AC & Mechanical CAD services, AC & Mechanical installations, AC
sub contracting, HVAC servicing & maintenance, Electrical installations,
Electrical testing & inspection, fire alarm testing, Portable appliance
testing and other specialist services of electrical, air-conditioning, heating,
ventilation and allied areas.
Mechanical
& Electrical companies typically compete in broad markets with differing customer
size and needs that may be geographically dispersed and that may seek differing
service benefits. Market intelligence publisher Mintel puts the number of firms
operating within M&E sector in the year 2008 at over 27,000 of varying
sizes operating within UK.
As
limited resources restricts organisations from serving the wide variety in
customer demand effectively it is imperative for them to target specific
segment/s of customer base that provides greatest opportunity for success. Current
economic climate and the future forecasts make this ever more relevant for X’s
survival.
Strategic questions such as:
Which criteria should be used to define the market segment? Which segments
provide X with greatest opportunity? What combination of benefits & costs
provide the target segment the greatest value add relative to X’s competitors? In addition to operational decision
pertaining to pricing, promotion, service delivery design and distribution can
be addressed by understanding the market structure that X currently operates in
and ultimately chooses to compete in. In the Business
Process Change Initiatives (BPCI) that I am working on (follow stage III
articles) I am trying to align X’s internal process with its market demand. I
am mainly concentrating on Purchase, Procurement and Supply-chain elements of
operations in Stage III articles.
X’s
History
The
history of X goes back to 19th century. The company started as
electrical contractors, installing telephones, electric bells and generators.
During the past century the company has also sold and serviced automobile
(electric & petrol), radios, TV’s, record players, refrigerators, Kitchen
and many other appliances.
X today
is a holding company based out of Leicester, UK. It has three major functioning
companies with in - A, B and C.
The
Organisation structure of X before the change initiative is illustrated below:
The
top level flow of control within X is illustrated below:
The Organisation structure illustrated above has undergone a
Brobdingnagian metamorphosis as a result of Change management that was
undertaken. Refer to Stage III Article 1 of a quick view of new structure. The objective
of Stage I is to gradually walk you through key elements of transformation
leading to a change in X’s organisation structure, culture and ultimately its
standing in market.
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