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Ford Ousts CEO Fields


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It was interesting years ago when Bill Ford realized, and admitted, that he wasn’t the right person to run Ford as it’s CEO and I’ll give him credit for that. And when he announced that he was looking outside the industry for someone to lead the company, the industry reaction was mostly about how no one outside the industry could understand the complexity of the automotive business. Along came Alan Mulally and his tenure at Ford set a new standard. He did his own homework, came to his own conclusions, developed a comprehensive plan and put it into place with results that speak volumes in terms of product development, quality, growth and profits for Ford and its dealership body.

 

After Mulally decided to leave Ford. My boss asked me what I thought about his leaving. My response at the time was that I thought Mulally had taught Ford executives, etc. everything he could and had nothing more to accomplish.

 

Unfortunately, Mark Fields and a lot of the other executives in Dearborn have since thrown out the Mulally playbook and gone back to the old ways of protecting their own turf and careers as their first priorities. And none of these occupants in the Dearborn glass tower has any idea of how the business runs on a day-to-day basis at the dealership level. They make decisions and have no idea of the impact they have on dealership relations, profits, morale, etc.

 

Marketing decisions are based on profit objectives alone even if it means losing business to the competition. This at a company that’s lost forty percent of its market share over the years and doesn’t seem to mind potentially losing more.

 

For several years Ford had an incentive plan for dealers that exceeded their monthly sales objective. A new sales objective was set each month for each dealership and the objectives often increased. The incentives were set up on a stair step basis but if a dealership exceeded their sales objective and met one or more of the stair step levels, the bonus money that could be earned was substantial. It wasn’t easy but dealerships went crazy to meet and exceed the objectives to earn the available bonus dollars. And if a dealership saw one of the bonus goals within sight, there were crazy deals being made. It pushed dealerships to increase sales month over month and gave a new sense of enthusiasm to the sales departments, etc. After Mulally left, so did the dealership stair step bonus incentives. Now there’s no longer any financial incentive for the dealership to increase sales on a month over month basis.

 

Dealers are being forced to take inventory they don’t need or want for their local market, all because of the constantly changing commodity issues. Ford’s building what they want to build in many cases, not what the market wants.

 

Dealers are almost completely isolated from contact with Ford, except for access to their Zone Manager and regional staff. Need to contact someone else at Ford? For years we had phone access to just about anyone, now a form must be submitted with the hope that you’ll get a useful reply. More often than not, the reply is useless. This isolation does wonders for morale when trying to get a vehicle order or status issue resolved for a customer.

 

And internally, Ford does things that they never finish. They finally developed a web based vehicle ordering system (WBDO) which was in beta testing for years before being rolled out nationally years ago. This new web based platform is intended to completely replace the old CONCEPS system. Unfortunately, WBDO still isn’t completed and often isn’t available for use. You can order vehicles for stock or retail but can’t place fleet orders and can’t use it to alter scheduled orders, report sales, etc. as those functions are still only available via CONCEPS. And CONCEPS relies on Java which is a nightmare at times. And the FMCDealer.com portal is a secure site but users must constantly log in when trying to access different parts of the site.

 

No questions that the substantial sales shift away from cars to trucks and SUV’s is an industry issue thanks to relatively low and stable gas prices. But what’s going to happen in the future, when car demand increases, when product development is pushed back substantially? What market will exist for the Focus when an all-new model is finally in production and technical issues (transmission) finally resolved? In the meantime, the competition will continue to develop and refresh product. Has Ford forgotten what happened to the Taurus?

 

Ford is constantly asking dealers for more hybrid orders, especially the plug-ins. Then try to get them built. It takes months just to get them scheduled. And just try to sell a Focus Electric which there is no demand for due to the limited range. For years Ford keeps talking about all the hybrid and electric vehicles they’re going to produce. Years later we’re still waiting. Lately we heard about all the hybrid and electric vehicles due within five years. Time will tell.

 

This message isn’t intended to be a rant about Ford but only to provide some examples of the daily issues faced at the dealership level. So now Ford has a new CEO and doing a full court press to convince everyone and Wall Street how good the change is. Time will tell, and it will take time before anything changes. I’m not convinced Ford has the right CEO in place and expect his tenure to be short. Again, we’ll all have to wait to see what develops. [/size]

Huge amount of truth in what this guy penned....

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Nothing like a post from the "front lines" as to how the real world works.

Let's again hope that the " CEO" is a pacifier for the " street" and the car guys can do their work unencumbered.

 

from a strictly-outsider's viewpoint, the only thing Mr. Mulally was good at,

other than the BROADEST of (un)common-sense things like 'Tell your colleagues&boss the truth'

& 'don't build a half-dozen variants of the same part like hood props if not really needed';

was

to be the GREATEST 'cheerleader' EVER to anyone not actually working for him (& possibly even down the org.chart)...

...imho that's more a personality thing than any kind of official qualifications/CV/degree/career-background.

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from a strictly-outsider's viewpoint, the only thing Mr. Mulally was good at,

other than the BROADEST of (un)common-sense things like 'Tell your colleagues&boss the truth'

& 'don't build a half-dozen variants of the same part like hood props if not really needed';

was

to be the GREATEST 'cheerleader' EVER to anyone not actually working for him (& possibly even down the org.chart)...

...imho that's more a personality thing than any kind of official qualifications/CV/degree/career-background.

The last point has been missing from Ford in the past three years,

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