Customers' Proximity is the only Mantra for Success
It's now the third consecutive year since the equipment market started registering negative growth; with government renewed focus to boost infra development, do you think CE market will start heading towards north by mid-2016 or it will take long due to high interest rate, pendency of GST, and land accusation issues?
With government stake on infrastructure growth and the vision of building world class highways, ports, smart cities, and ambitious Make in India projects; there is surely a boost in development. But with these initiatives a lot more is required to accelerate the demand graph of equipment market. Even though the projects are announced, delay in starting them on ground and cost overruns have crippled the expected demand growth. Addition to this, shortage of funds, delays in government clearances, pendency in GST & land acquisition have worsened the situation.
Demand growth by urbanization, infrastructure ramp up & investment, mining industry, and acceleration of stalled projects along with widened financing options will be the key drivers for construction equipment industry to grow.
No sooner, these issues are tackled the CE industry will witness improved & sustainable growth. Further, with a clear policy on Land Acquisition and implementation of uniform taxation system are some of the immediate requirements for the infrastructure sector to grow and prosper.
In the current slowdown spell, how has the company been able to handle pessimism within and outside the company and remained focused to perform and contribute to its business targets?
Remaining attached with our customer base helps catch new enquiries and offer innovative solution for new equipment sales. Our focus on trade in or old machine replacement schemes is helping us to increase sales.
Early this year Terex launched Chinese leading manufacturer Lonking's Loader for the Indian market. How has the response been so far? Will you start assembling it in India in near future?
Following a process of continuous innovation, the team of experts at Terex has always worked towards bringing forth construction equipment that are leagues ahead of competition. Range of Terex Wheel Loaders, CDM 856, and CDM 835 with payload capacity of 5T & 3.5T respectively are the best in class with excellent loading performance, and perfect example of technical prowess & expertise. Terex Wheel Loaders combine compact dimensions with impressive productivity for real value. Their strengths make them best suited in application including mining, material handling, quarry sites etc. Our strategic tie-up with Lonking is helping a lot and with the immense talent pool of great, efficient Engineers, we are doing a lot of good things for our wheel loader customers.
How are these Loaders technologi- cally superior and offer better working experience?
When talking about Wheel Loaders as a machine, few parameters come in mind immediately like strong structural built, exceptional load carrying capacity with ability of loading & unloading material continuously.
Terex Wheel loaders are designed by keeping low life cycle cost, faster ROI's & lowest per ton cost in mind, fitted with fuel efficient Cummins engines in CDM 835 -payload capacity of 3.5T & WeiChai Engines in CDM 856 -payload capacity of 5T. Technologies like automatic levelling, 4F/3R Transmission with ZF, ROPS/FOPS cabin makes them best in class & offer higher ROI for customers.
There is fierce competition in the backhoe market due to declining demand; the manufacturers need to keep upgrading their products to give customers value for money experience. What innovations/modifications Terex did in the last two years to keep its backhoe technologically advanced and superior?
At Terex, our team of Engineers, and designers are focused to deliver on productivity gains to our buyer with the safety and reliability to its users, consistent with our brand attributes in any country across the world. On this platform, we re-designed our flagship TLB740S backhoe loader and fitted it with a high performance kingpost assembly to get higher torque and at the same time upgraded the cabin for a fatigue free work environment. With our latest generation TLB740SE backhoe, a curved type boom & dipper stick was introduced to enable greater ease & higher productivity while using the excavator in urbanization projects like Metro, housing estates and municipality works. The new cabin design again focusses on the users and offers highest standards of safety and comfort. The entire powertrain components are sourced from the best quality suppliers ensuring high reliability during toughest working conditions.
Preventive maintenance has become the major USP these days. What are the systems placed, and services being offered to make equipment available for the job?
When the projects are time bound and machines need to run round the clock, PM becomes effective way of planning-maintenance costs, convenience, and increased machine life. Also it's a cost-effective way of detecting the problems before they cause breakdowns and increased downtime. Regular maintenance and scheduled checkups give advantage to have an eye on warranty coverage of major oil & components changes and avoid unexpected breakdowns. Our warranty systems and service set up including deployment of our CRM module help us to achieve the desired machine uptime and keep our customers happy.
Proximity to customers is the call of the day. How is Terex positioning itself to address this new mantra?
We, at Terex, believe in remaining close to our customers in terms of both their experiences with our product range services and providing them with best & optimum solution of their requirement is the only mantra to succeed. The process not only makes us understand the customer and his requirement but also makes us part of his decision-making when buying his equipment.
Proximity to our customers in today's digital & portable devices era has opened new and innovative ways to remain connected to your customer base & improved the customer experience. And gave power back to tech savvy and technology oriented customer to choose, compare & select what, how, when, and where they wish to.
Do you have any expansion plan in terms of product launch or dealership network in near future?
Terex is in the process of reinventing its customers' engagement programs and is committed to bring the best buying and operating experience to them. Our distribution channel is gearing up to be more responsive to understand business issues that our customers face. The solutions that we offer & propose can then help them grow profitably. As part of a major channel overhaul exercise in 2015, we revamped our Dealer selection process in line with our objective to make the distribution network more responsive to the needs of our new generation of customers.
Other than this, we are fully geared up to improve sales of our flagship TLB series backhoe loaders. We, at Terex, are also well positioned in the skid Steer loader market with our Heman 175 model & Mining, Material processing segment with our Wheel Loaders CDM 835 & CDM 856 having 3.5T & 5T payload capacity respectively.
NBM&CW November 2015
