A rich heritage, a bright future

EUI spoke with Giuseppe Fano, VP Sales & Marketing Europe for New Holland Construction about the company’s drive for success.

“Thanks to the various mergers and joint ventures New Holland can boast a very rich heritage in Europe, summing up over 230 years of experience from some of the major names in the development of construction equipment,” says Giuseppe Fano, VP Sales & Marketing Europe for New Holland Construction. “And with deep regional roots in North and Latin America, Europe and Asia has moulded its history into a truly global presence and brand.”

These deep roots mean New Holland has a unique quality: it is a brand with a product line that already has a well deserved reputation for hard working performance and service support to customers, all over the world. In bringing together these brands it seeks to assure existing owners and unite the best and proven technology from around the world.

“Partnerships mean technological leadership,” says Fano. “New Holland can be up-to-the-edge on the marketplace, on a complete top quality range of products and services to best serve our customers.”

Q. What would a customer notice?

A. Founded on a full range of top quality products, the most important element for New Holland today is the customer, and the key point for our success is his satisfaction: we are totally focused on him.

Over the course of time our Customers have changed, but this is just the beginning of this transformation and in the near future we’ll be facing very complicated and different situations. The market is more and more qualified, therefore, the customer is attracted by very interesting offers in terms of price, discount and commercial offering, and able to chose from many different products.

What make the difference – and our customers can notice this – is that we, a manufacturing company already at one with our dealers, keep in even closer contact with him to understand, anticipate and interpret the real needs of his business and offer him solutions tailor-made every single time, also in terms of excellent product support and customised financial packages.

Our broad range of products, which has to match the strong focus of our dealerships in terms of sales and customer service, allows us to offer an outstanding service, highly optimising costs. We have fine-tuned all tools, so that we can offer real value and not just goods and services.

Q. Has New Holland achieved its stated aim to become “a strong, global, full-line brand”? What advantages does this bring?

A. New Holland is a key global player in the construction equipment market, with a truly global presence in terms of sales in five continents. Thanks to our joint ventures we have production plants located in the markets where the demand and the technologies are more evolved. At the same time we can count on the development of centres of excellence for each product line, offering to the customer base a selection of best in class technology.

To satisfy our customer requirements, we offer a complete range of products, with 12 families, 80 models and over 600 configurations.

Being a global and full-line brand, New Holland has a global vision and strategy that makes the brand stronger, with a coherent proposition and communication to the marketplace. By being global, it is possible to identify and implement synergies in several areas of the business: product, manufacturing, sourcing and thanks to an international organisation we can leverage on global information and experiences to quickly react to market needs.

And the global opportunity is even greater because we are part of a big group – the Fiat Group – that covers a large spectrum of the automotive landscape, of which the agricultural and construction equipment business accounts for about 20 percent in terms of turnover. Being part of the Fiat Group, New Holland can afford the additional advantage of synergies in several areas: technology development, purchasing, customer care projects and emerging countries start ups, just to mention some of them.

Our present is imposing, thanks to our history, presence and success stories, but we want to get ready for the future. Times are changing, and we want to come out of these changes even stronger.

Q. How do you improve on products that already do the job very well? What new technologies are on the horizon?

A. Our top quality recognised products are developed and manufactured around three key drivers: productivity, durability and safety. It is fundamental to continue to invest to keep on improving in these directions and to improve manufacturing processes in order to guarantee an ever-rising quality standard for New Holland products.

With this aim, the key actions that will drive our growth in 2007 and onwards are: the continuous enrichment of our product portfolio to further enhance the depth of our product offering (the large majority of our products will be renewed or refreshed by 2010), reduction in fuel consumption, the improved serviceability (reduction of maintenance time and efficiency improvement) on all our products.

A very relevant example is our effort to develop environmentally friendly machines with a prototype of the hybrid excavators. Using both an electric motor and a diesel engine, the achieved objective of this prototype was to reduce fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent, compared with the current diesel engine base model.

We are working really hard to offer ever-increasing product quality and reliability: quality is not an option but a pre-requisite to be part of the “excellence club”.

Q. New Holland can now be added to the desirable list of brands – Aston Martin, Lotus, etc. – driven by fictional spy, James Bond. How did this come about?

A. We had a lucky opportunity. Our Wheel Loader W190 was selected for the latest James Bond movie, which has been on worldwide release since November 2006.

We delivered 11 machines to the James Bond set to lend credibility to a scene shot in a construction site. As a renowned performer on job sites, our W190 was driven by none other than Daniel Craig/Bond himself, who stated how easy and funny it was to manage an 18 ton piece of equipment.

This product placement has allowed us to accelerate building the New Holland brand in Europe. As with the other top level products famous for being “touched” by James Bond’s hands, this opportunity is bringing to New Holland both immediate recognition and long term benefits.

Let’s consider that both Bond and New Holland are loyal, dependable, trustworthy and solid and have passion for their jobs. Bond has the latest technology at his fingertips, as does New Holland. And Bond is a problem solver, like New Holland, solving its customers’ problems through innovative solutions.

Q. Construction equipment can have strong residual value. Is this a particular strength of the New Holland product range? How do you capitalise upon it?

A. It is not a secret that New Holland is working very hard on the development of a tool that will open a worldwide window on its used equipment. Being global means offering customers a global market to address their used equipment.

We focus on the customer through maintenance programmes that ensure constant top-level performance and operational features of our machines, securing stronger residual value thanks to a full reliability for future owners also.

Q. How do you maintain quality of service across the dealer network?

A. New Holland can count on an excellent, solid and well-established dealer network. We work shoulder-to-shoulder with following shared standards: dealers, together with their authorised workshops represent, in their own territory, the reference for the customer and offer continuous training for their sales people.

That is why it is so important to have a full range of products that matches the strong focus of the dealerships in terms of sales and customer service (spare parts stock, diagnosis and repair capabilities), a focus that allows us to always offer an outstanding service, highly optimising costs.

Only by training key people at the dealers will their knowledge of the products improve, their understanding of the customers’ needs and job site application guaranteeing tailor-made solutions to present to customers as best as they can. Trained staff act promptly, improving the “perception” of high quality, efficiency and organisation that is built in to each of our business proposals.

Q. According to company literature: “New Holland presents an extraordinary, forward thinking challenge to the whole market”. Please explain.

A. In spite of the fact that these are times of growing demand in the construction equipment machinery sector, it cannot allow distraction, for the market is now global. It is important to move to a fully open, declared, total strong action plan, constant and without hesitation.

The demand curve, which used to be easily foreseeable in its cycles, is now irregular, with more ample variations and shorter phases. The customer is changing in his structure and business attitude, becoming increasingly demanding. The market is tougher every day: stable networks are being built with ambitious goals; new products are coming to the market with ever increasing speed. So it is very important to quickly understand the market signals, improving our foresight, and to be able to react immediately.

In the coming years the scenario will be very aggressive price-wise, and so it is fundamental to be in ever closer contact with the customer to understand and anticipate the real needs of his business. To be successful in this constantly evolving marketplace we need to move from selling a product to winning over and keeping a customer, from selling a price to selling the value of the suggested solution. And in this environment the speed of action and reaction will be one of the key factors for company success: our ability to anticipate new needs and to respond to the changes without delay is a source of optimism in this environment.

Obviously we must be technically competent in our business, but this is not enough; human relationship values are becoming more and more vital: trust and reliability, sincerity and credibility, warmth and the ability to make people feel at ease, to be good hosts, the ability to listen, flexibility, correctness, composure and balance, not making promises that cannot be kept. That is why we can really say to our customers: “New Holland – built around you”.

Giuseppe Fano is Vice President Sales & Marketing Europe New Holland Construction Equipment and President and Chief Executive Officer of New Holland Kobelco Construction Machinery S.p.A.

Find out more: www.newholland.com

Giuseppe Fano: “Being global means offering customers a global market”