Hino Pietermaritzburg has come out top in the commercial vehicle category of the MSX (formerly Sewells-MSX) NADA Business of the Year awards for 2019, which were announced recently via a Zoom link. This was the third year in a row that this dealership, which is a member of the Bidvest McCarthy Group, has been the category winner in this prestigious contest organised by the National Automobile Dealers’ Association (NADA).
The winner’s near neighbours, Hino Pinetown, had been one of the other finalists in the commercial vehicle category, along with Unitrans Volkswagen Commercial.
Gary McCraw, Director of NADA, was full of praise for South African motor dealerships, saying: “No matter what challenges are thrown our way and how insurmountable they appear to be, one must take stock and find innovative ways to address issues head on.
“The current pandemic has meant that we have had to engineer a new and inventive way to celebrate our top performing businesses and it was done very well with Zoom and a group of national rugby personalities making the presentations.”
Now in its 22nd year, the MSX NADA Business of the Year Awards have been staged to honour the performances of the managers and their teams at motor dealerships countrywide. It is the only independent validation of these dealerships’ profitability.
MSX International (MSX) measures the financial performance of more than 1 000 of the franchised motor dealers in South Africa on a monthly basis and annually ranks them in terms of the highest to the lowest return on average assets percentage. It then recognises the top performers across seven categories.
“We did nothing special in repeating our successes of 2017 and 2018 other than the ongoing use of Kaizen, which is Japanese for making continual improvements. We aimed to improve each aspect of our business over 2018 and this strategy paid off handsomely,” explained Pretesh Singh, the dealer principal at Bidvest McCarthy Hino Pietermaritzburg.
“We have also been the top ranked dealership among all the Hino dealers in the Bidvest McCarthy Group for the past four years,” added Singh.
“Regular communication between all the people in the dealership is a way of life and includes structured, weekly meetings involving the parts supervisor, service manager, administration supervisor, all three salespersons and the dealer principal. I am always open to suggestions of improvement from my team members,” said Singh.
Hino Pietermaritzburg is a long-established Hino truck dealership, having originally been a Dan Perkins outlet. The current facility is located on a large piece of land, so on-site parking for servicing or new truck storage are not a problem.
Pretesh Singh has worked in the retail motor industry for most of his career. Although his main interest is in administration he started as a service advisor at a passenger car dealership before joining Hino Pietermaritzburg more than a decade ago. Here he worked as a costing clerk and warranty controller before progressing to service advisor and then service manager. He held the latter position for six years before being appointed dealer principal in August 2017.
“Hino South Africa is very proud of the consistently high performances delivered by Pretesh and the team at Hino Pietermaritzburg, a Bidvest McCarthy dealership,” commented Pieter Klerck, Head of Hino SA. “This is not only an efficiently run business, but they also have very high standards of delivery in terms of the customer experience, with many long-standing fleet owners on their books who are provided with outstanding service.”
“To be a Business of the Year (BOTY) winner is an exceptional achievement,” said Athol Quin, MSX International Director: South and Sub-Saharan Africa. “Dealerships are complex businesses requiring enormous attention to detail and a concerted effort by all the team members to improve the customer experience along with the financial viability and sustainability of the business.”
“Even in difficult times we have a duty to recognise and acknowledge excellence. We trust that each of these dealership’s unique formula for success will carry them through the current challenging times,” concluded McCraw.
