Research findings from interview with Area managers
Area managers are interviewed to gather the required information related to the strategies implemented across the sales and distribution level and the level of employee awareness towards the strategies implemented across the unit and the corresponding findings in the opinion of the area managers interviewed are as given below
Strategy development and implementation process followed across distribution unit
The actual process followed to develop and implement a strategy is really important to decide the fate of the strategy being implemented across the organization and in this section, the opinion of the area managers are gathered with respect to the their process followed to develop and implement a typical distribution strategy across the area being distributed. When the question like, what are the recent distribution strategies implemented across your area to the area managers, most of them responded like “Our new strategy is create new retail business locations across the area and also increases the sales target” and from this statement it is clear, that always a new strategy is developed and implemented across the areas of the respective area managers and these strategies mainly focus on the sales targets and also raise the curtains for more business.
Area managers are responsible to develop the required distribution strategies as per the current marketing conditions and when they were asked like, do you set targets to your employees with respect to sales, and one of the area managers replied that “We have predefined monthly and quarterly targets across our area and we will fix with them” and from this statement it is clear that, the targets and the related strategies are done on a long term based and even the employees are given ample freedom to meet their targets with respect to the strategies being developed across the distribution areas.
When the same question is asked, one of the area managers replied like “Targets are set based on the employee performance and capability, but most of our strategies focus on the distribution and sales targets itself” and from this statement it is clear that, most of the distribution and sales strategies developed and implemented across the distribution unit are focused on the targets itself and even the employees are aware of their personal and unit targets and thus the role of area manager can be considered as the key aspect in terms of communicating the corresponding strategies to the employees.
Regarding the communication mechanism implemented by the area managers to communicate the strategies to the employee, when the question like how do you communicate the strategies to the employee, one of the area managers replied like “We will have regular review meetings in terms of targets and the recent distribution strategies and in general these targets and strategies are fixed for a long time” and from this statement it is clear that, the strategies are communicated to the employees at the beginning of a month or a quarter in the form of review meetings and in general across the distribution process, there is less scope to change the strategies. Review meeting and team meetings are commonly used to communicate the strategies to the employees and when the same question is asked to one of the area managers, the reply is like “Employees are communicated daily through emails regarding the targets and issues are accepted with respect to the employees”.
From this statement it is clear that, email communication is used to get the regular updates and also the issues of the employees with respect to the targets are encouraged through email communication. Even the targets are fixed for a month or quarter, it is always a good practice to get the regular updates and feedback in the form of issues from the employees and even there is ample scope to review the issues with the strategies being implemented.