Introduction of Public Star Auto

Mr. Palan Ramasamy founded this business in the year 1995. Originally, he
started this business as him doing general insurance, and he also has been a
life insurance agent in Great Insurance Life for 27 years. He is a group sales
manager for 17 years and still maintaining till this moment. After that, he
started exploring used car department 15 years back and KIA MOTORS sales
for 7 years. He also owns a KIA service centre for the past 5 years. The
headquarters of Public Star Auto is located in Seremban while their outlets are
in Bahau and Port Dickson. Their service centre is situated in Seremban.

Public Star Auto sells all types of KIA car models such as Sportage & Sportage
NGV, Optima &Optima NGV, Citra & Citra NGV, SPECTRA 5, Ria & Ria NGV,
Sorento, Spectra and Suria with warranties for either 5 years or 125 000km. In
addition, they sell Pregio and Rondo on loan for monthly loan from RM 853
and RM 930 respectively. He started this as a family business with his three
brothers. They have 3 senior staff to handle the general insurance. Until now,
he had invested 20 billion in this organization. Mr. Palan have full of
confidence in the development of his business as he tells us he is going retire
in this few year time and allow his son to run the organization. Besides, NAZA
KIA wins best dealers in Asia Pacific. In proving of their excellence, in Malaysia,
Public Star Auto is one of the dealers scored sufficient points to be accorded
“A” which KIA MOTORS recognizes as being “Platinum Dealer”. This is one of
the remarkable achievements achieved by the organization.

KIA MOTORS –

PLANNNING
As an organization that always wants to strike for the best, managing director
of the Public Star Auto believes mission statement plays an important role in
maintaining their success. For him, mission statement serves roles as the
present purpose of the organization and provides direction where the
organization is heading.
For Public Star Auto, their mission is to be committed to cultivate friendly
environment with customers to create a good relationship for excellent sales.
Mission statements are annually reviewed to make some adjustments so that
their mission statement is not out date. The managing director of Public Star
Auto will conduct a brief meeting once he reviewed mission statement so that
his employees are clear with the new mission statement and enable to follow
it. As for their vision, Public Star Auto will be the top sales in Seremban by
2009.

Public Star Auto management never fails to do planning to run their business
smoothly. Planning is done according to the current demand and wave of the
economics. For the long-term planning of Public Star Auto, they are concern
about the inverse investment. They realized that normally an organization will
reach the maximum benefits in 25 year. After reaching the maximum benefits,
the branch manager will take around 20% cash & capital to make new
investment. He believes that investments minimize the loss of the
organization. For example, he will take the capital to invest in the share market
to increase their core value.

For long term planning, Mr. Palan is planning to open another outlet in Nilai in
near future. This is to enhance their profit in the sales as the managing
director believes that car sales business will always grow. This plan is being
discussed by the top managers to make this new plan will bring benefits to
the organization. In his own assumption, he is planning to open the new
branch in Nilai in another 5 more years. By clear and defined planning, he
believes this strategy will be another core factor in strengthening his business.

In addition with their long term planning, Public Star Auto has proposed to
the KIA MOTORS management to manufacture a new model of KIA car using
NGV to meet demand of the customers. With this new plan, he believes sales
of KIA cars will increase as many people nowadays use cars with NGV. This
long term planning will benefit the organization if the KIA MOTORS
management agrees to do.

Next is the short-term planning, the management emphasizes on building a

strong relationship within the seller and customer. Their main plan is to be
able to create an understanding and harmony environment with the
customers. With this, they provide financial loans to the customers to reduce
their burden while making sure the customers will be able to buy cars. For
example, they usually will plan to organize a small buffet occasionally by
inviting their customers’ families to have their breakfast in order to build
relationship with their customers. This plan is occasionally done depending on
the clear financial statement.

The second short-term planning for Public Star Auto is to pursue

retrenchment strategy whenever it is necessary to be applied. They cut down
all the unwanted operation cost and unnecessary wastage in the organization.
In addition, managing director of Public Star Auto cuts down top manager’s
salary as they can still be able manage their family compared with those with
low salary employee. This plan is effective the growth of business is slow and
this plan is also to backup the slowdown experiencing by the organization.

Furthermore, when they bring out a new series car, top managers have the
responsibility to plan how to attract the consumer. . Thus, it makes sure the
director of Public Star Auto has extra time to make strategy planning. One of
the ways they plan to attract attention of people is by organizing activities.
The management organizes special activities like lucky draws to attract
customers’ attention to their showroom. This will be a great opportunity for
the organization to showcase their new series of car.

Besides that, they will provide gifts or free service if they attend the activities.
This will be another way to build relationship with customers. The other way to
promote the new series of cars is by frequently advertising so that the public
be aware of the new arrival. Public Star Auto will advertise about the new
arrival of car in flyers which is distributed around Negeri Sembilan.

To attract customers’ intention towards KIA cars, the management does

several planning so that KIA cars are preferred among the public. The
management does the planning by discussing with the managing director so
that they come out with a best solution. They will plan to organize road shows
in places where it is a famous spot in Seremban such as Jusco, Giant
Senawang and Terminal 1. This plan will be implemented especially when
there is festive season as it will be more effective.

Based on the observation made by the Public Star Auto, only 60% of the
Malaysian can legally buy a car. However, the government has open too many
licenses for the car companies to operate in Malaysia. It causes many
competitors in this industry. Thus, Public Star Auto prefers on customer mental
serviced. By this, they can ensure public has good relationship with the
organization and benefits them for a longer term. They are keen to provide an
excellent service to make sure customers have good interest and perception of
KIA cars; otherwise they will refuse to purchase KIA cars.

Organizing
Under the organizing process, Public Star Auto is well-organized with the
current hierarchy as below.

The Director of Public Star Auto divided and structured the organizational
structure into 4 departments. The departments are consisting of workshop
manager, accounts & administration department, store department and sales
department. Under the workshop department, there are administration and
accountancy department, store assistant department, service advisor
department, and technicians departments. Under the administration and
accountancy department, there are accountant executive and accountant
executive. The department will handle all the account statement given by top
management. Next for store department, there is a store executive who is in
charge of the outgoing and incoming stocks. The staff will ensure every month
of the resources enough such as the car. There is a technician executive and a
supervisor that supervises the technicians. The workshop manager has a wide
span of control because the head of the workshop department have to be in
charge of another 4 departments under it.

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Normally the task will be delegated to senior staffs who have been working for
25 years. Under the director, there is 3 staff under his control to complete their
job. Besides that, Public Star Auto sellers have wholly managed by the
managing director as he is the franchise holder. When they receive the daily
task given by the director, they need to settle the task before go off the duty.
It’s to make sure very thing done and no procrastinate to build out an
efficiency & effectiveness work. For definite the procrastinate, its mean the
people fear of something or lack or confident when receive the task.

The organization accounting department is lead by a capable accountant. She

has a Human Resource (HR) person working under her control. This
organization has clear rules and a procedure to follow. It is to make sure they
achieve their vision and mission. Under the supervision it makes sure no any
cheating and run the cash flow properly.

Furthermore, decentralization plays a role in this organization. The director will

give the authority to subordinate in decision making. The sellers are not tied
with rules and regulations in terms of promoting the cars. For example, the
seller can choose to promote the cars in public places such as shopping
complex or in cooperate companies. That is one of the ways to motivate and
increase their self confident while promoting the car because they have
authority to decide the ways to promote cars.

In addition, Public Star Auto is a departmentalized organization. The director

of Public Star Auto will set target for every department in half year. Every
department might implement the objective given by top management in their
own way without receiving permission from the top managers.

Leading
Mr. Palan uses two types of leading style to lead his organization. That is
autocratic style and democratic style. For autocratic style, the director will set
the rule that the statement of profit and loss for every month must be
submitted before 15th of each month. The second autocratic style they using
is if the employee want to take leave, he or she need to make the request
before 3 day.

For democratic style, when the new series car is coming, the director will hold
a meeting for discussing with employees how the advertisements & the sales
should be. The employee has the chance to give some suggestions due to
their experiences and that also is one of the democratic styles that the director
has used. The manager also gives the promoter authority to discount for the
customer within the range of percentage.

Public Star Auto management will motivate the subordinate by mentally &
physically. For mentally motivation, every Saturday the manager will hold a
meeting for the entire employee to give any feedback or suggestion at least 1
or 2 hour. It motivates employees because they feel that they also are involved
in decision making. As well as the director receive the feedback given by
employee; the director will share some life experience to employee and
education teaching them to grab a meaningful life. It’s also improving the
relationship between managers and subordinates. He checks the daily
performance of the organization. The staff reports the daily sales and cash
flow to maintain the performance of the organization. The managing director
will conduct a meeting to motivate his subordinates so that they will improve
their performance.

The manager uses few ways to improve their performance. The first method is
manager send those excellence employees go oversea for training. It can gain
experience other than their job while they get training. The second method is
exchanging the employee from branch to branch for certain period. It might
refresh their mind rather than constant in the same work environment. The
third way is the senior employee takes turn training the new employee within
the company. It’s cut the operational cost of training because all the activity
run in the company and let the new employee to know how the seniors
control the problems.

For the physically motivation, firstly, Mr. PALAN have always pay overtime to
the subordinate. That is avoiding creating the Theory X in organization. The
example of Theory X is the employee try to avoid responsibility or the
employee dislike the work and other words the employee must be controlled,
coerced and threatened with punishment by the supervisor.Secondly, at every
end of the year, Mr. PALAN will gives reward to some of the excellent
employee like who can sell how much car per month.
Controlling
For maintaining the performance of staff, every day before the employees
leave office, their tasks or documents must be sent and checked by the
supervisor. It is to make sure the subordinates come to the company with a
fresh and clear mind the next day. It is also one of the ways to prevent
procrastination. For example, the employee fears of failure because if the
employee fails to finish the task on time the manager has the power of
punishing the employee by assigning the boring task or unpleasant work.

Every month, the director will have meeting with the salespersons personally
to discuss about the sales of car per month. This meeting is held intentionally
to discuss the problem faced by the salespersons to sell car and problems in
meeting the target of organization. Furthermore, this opportunity is used to
find the solution to the issues dealt by the salesperson and ways to enhance
the market demand.

Besides that, they also have peer observation; the subordinate can discuss
about the way to converse with customers to make it improve. The
subordinate can give some advisement or suggestion to each other for
improvement. In addition, statistics of sales of every month is issued by the
sales supervisor. This is in order to compare number of sales of car of each
month with the previous sales. By doing this, the organization gets a clear
picture of their performance and knows their target.

For addition, we will consider the feedback because a control that prevents
anticipated problems before actual occurrences of the problem. If any
feedback comes from the customer, we will take some corrective action to
improve our service with mentally and physically.

Last but not the least, to prevent financial crisis, the director will direct the
accountant to ensure every term of cash flow in the right way as planned.
Every statement of profit and loss of every month must be submitted before
15th of each month. The manager commitment to maintaining a positive
working relationship with government and immigration authorities ensures
the smooth processing of every single statement or approval.