The past year has seen Heatcraft Australia introduce a number of new initiatives led by its new vice president and general manager, Tom Overs.
In January 2015, Overs will celebrate 12 months at the helm of Heatcraft Australia and New Zealand. During that time, he has been busy fine-tuning the wholesaler's business model.
“The company certainly hasn't required fixing. It's more a case of making a good organisation even better. This is a solid, well-established business,” Overs says.
The fine-tuning, he says, has involved customer-focused restructuring and a renewed focus on distribution and technical support. The first major initiative Overs focused on was the creation of a Technical Excellence Centre.
Overs says customer feedback identified the need for technical support and greater access to product information for contractors. He says this demand for technical support reflects a global trend.
“Australia has a shortage of new technicians for the HVACR trade which is the same in Canada and the United States,” Overs says.
“Unfortunately not a lot of young people are moving into this industry, we tend to only have very experienced contractors which is creating a technical gap in the industry.” But Heatcraft has the technical expertise to fill this gap. Overs says it is this expertise that will help Heatcraft form close partnerships with its customer base now and in the future.
“We partner with our customers knowing that when they are successful, we are successful,” he says. “Technical support improves their business, that's why when we do training or collaborate with customers we sit side by side with them to ensure they are getting the best from our products.” Overs says Heatcraft has the resources to provide first class professional support.
“Customers know when they do business with us they are dealing with the factory. We can make decisions today. They don't have to go to the supplier or head office,” he says. “This is our key differentiator in the market, our one-step distribution business model.
“Heatcraft has a direct-to-contractor model that is supported by a network of over 70 outlets and distribution centres with a Direct Selling Force and field engineers.” This is in addition to Heatcraft's own refrigerant decanting facility, design engineering team and its manufacturing footprint around the globe.
“We have our own local facility to provide product assembly and modification for the local market. This means solutions can be customised for our customers specific needs,” Overs says. “The biggest initiatives are customer-driven.”
To do this, Overs says the team needs to be knowledgeable in HVACR to ensure customers get a credible answer immediately.
This is the approach Overs took when staffing the Technical Excellence Centre in a bid to make Heatcraft a more valued supplier.
“The restructuring we did in August was about putting people in the right place to better focus on the customer, we called it ‘shifting gears’ to move forward,” Overs says. “We also spent more time with customers in 2014 to verify we were heading in the right direction. This included customer symposiums, roundtables, visits and market research.”
Since the removal of the carbon tax, Overs says gas prices have fallen significantly. “But it isn't just about the price of gas in the post-levy environment, we've expanded the conversation beyond refrigerant because we offer a broader value proposition,” he says.
Over the next few years, Overs says their goals include increasing customer satisfaction levels and technical competency as well as growing revenue and profit. “We want to maintain our market leadership and continue to be the supplier contractors rely on because of our superior value proposition."