(f)AXED

HCL was the group and Network was a group company. We knew that Network could not get sell any of the products that HCL sold through its other group companies. The “Office Automation” space was getting restricted and Network started looking out. Strategic Consultants were brought in and a few of our HEADS went on foreign sojourns to Exhibitions and Fairs to select relevant products. People even started research on unconnected areas like BIO-TECH. It was then that they realized that Medical Diagnostics was perhaps an area worth looking and within a year we had two tie ups. The first one was with Picker and the other with Medison of Korea, for MRIs and UltraSound Machines respectively.

The market was good and it was novel concept of having a slow moving high value product combined with a potentially faster moving item. What we also knew that was that the Maintenance Revenue earned through the Office Automation was business was being diverted to these new businesses leaving the OA population to start thinking about migration to the new avatar – Telecom.

That was the time when OA business needed a push. The push came in different ways. The first one was in terms of attacking a different market segment and the second one was about picking a new product to sell.

The margins on service contracts were good and we were getting cash rich with the multiple year schemes. This made us greedy and quality started to fall since fair investments were not being done on the maintenance infrastructure. You had the medical business team coming in at higher salaries and suddenly the traditional OA people felt left out. The revered marketing team of Network had no more ideas left for Electronic typewriters or the likes.

It was depressing all right for the OA group when our Connection resulted in a spark idea of Network getting into Facsimile Machines(FAX). The product was gaining popularity and was largely sold by small time traders. Faxes were mostly used in STD booths or retail business centers. Organized companies were still in the process of shifting from traditional teleprinters and telexes to these machines. The market as such had to grow since if you own a fax machine you cannot necessarily use it unless your counterpart on the other side has one!

The other concept of selling Typewriters through dealers were already put in place albeit with their own sets of problems of unclear territories, poor quality of machines, lack of training and support, etc. But we were chugging along and then came the fax for both the selling arms. Direct Sales and the dealer community were both excited with the product but did not know how to counter the small time sellers and the grey market.

Himanshu Kapania the product manager for fax had created this elaborate paper on fax but that was not useful for the field. For some reason, sales training sort of fell onto my head too and I started creating the training material on faxes. We were basically losing deals all over the country and stocks were piling up at head office.

That was the scenario when we created thsi elaborate schedule of travesring the length and breadth of the country, visiting all locations and taking sessions with the sales people on usage of the machine, the technical points that was required for selling and of course handling competition. It was a price sensitive market and we had to tread carefully in terms of deiscounts or promotions.

The fax honeymoon lasted for a file, newer models were introduced but now the organisation itself was plagued with cancer. The Cancer hads started earlier in terms of over confidence at the top. Irrelevant dreams supported by "YES" men and women at the top and of course there was the arrogance of a brother who wanted to be larger than the group!!

Telecom was the new sunrise sector and scores of people left the organisation. The management of Network went into a downward spiral and just could not recover from market presuures and more of course from internal group pressures.

It does pain to write about the downfall about an enterprise that had managed to give a lot. It gave a lot to the market, its employees and general society. Would like to talk about that in the next episode!!