JCB construction equipment is now supported locally by Bell Equipment South Africa

COVER STORY JCB construction equipment is now supported locally by Bell Equipment South Africa

Amidst a global pandemic, increasing competition and tough operating conditions businesses have been forced to re-evaluate operations. Lifting Africa sat down with Stephen McNeill, Bell Equipment Marketing and Alliance Partner Manager, to find out more about their approach to the new normal.

The Covid-19 crisis forced a sudden change upon us all. It also put extreme pressure on supply chains, customer operations and purchases. Businesses have had to navigate a host of new financial and operational challenges while still meeting the needs of their people, customers and suppliers. Navigating the impact of Covid-19 has not been easy. Due to the depressed economic conditions made worse by the ongoing pandemic, the big challenge facing OEMs is the reduced demand for new equipment as customers are understandably nervous, says McNeill. “Unpredictable demand for a product and unstable demand for commodities makes it difficult to plan and prepare for market moves. Ensuring machine availability for our customers remains an increasingly difficult challenge.” Across the board, OEMs are preparing for another tough year with the industry outlook for South Africa remaining depressed as the country grapples with low infrastructure spending in a weakened economy with the spiralling national debt. “Our recently announced partnership with JCB should lead to some gains within the markets as JCB has a significant market share in certain sectors in which it is active, and we have increased our resources to ensure our support can match the machine population and exceed JCB customer expectations.”

New agreements

Bell Equipment Sales South Africa (BESSA) earlier this year announced it had been appointed by JCB, one of the most respected companies in the construction equipment sector, to be the distributor of its full range of construction equipment in South Africa from May 1. “The agreement has been well accepted by the market and our employees, who are all excited by the opportunity that it presents, namely the opportunity to marry a well-respected, premium product range with a leading support network,” explains McNeill. “There have been some customers who are concerned about how it will impact support of products from our other OEM partners, but we have communicated that we and our OEM partners all fully appreciate our joint obligations to provide full support for the life of any units sold and will fully honour these obligations to our customers.” According to McNeill, the agreement gives the South African market access to JCB’s premium range of construction products supported by BESSA’s comprehensive local support network of 22 Bellowned branches. JCB customers now have the added benefit of buying from BESSA, which is a level 1 BBBEE company. “Currently our efforts are predominantly focused on ensuring that our transition to the JCB product line is as smooth and seamless as possible for customers and employees. A great deal of resources and effort has gone into ensuring adequate parts inventory and stock holding as well as making sure our sales and support staff are fully trained and versed to handle the new product range,” he says. “Once the JCB partnership has bedded down we should then be ready to introduce our new Series 5 Tractor to the market, which will target the forestry and agriculture industries.”

Trends and outlook

McNeill says due to market uncertainty and the price of new equipment, the trend is that customers are looking to sweat their existing assets, even sometimes opting to rebuild their ADTs through the Bell ReMan programme at a fraction of the cost of a new machine. Others are choosing to invest in pre-owned equipment, which requires a reduced capital outlay. “In response, we have launched a global website for

Bell pre-owned equipment, which gives customers access to Bell pre-owned equipment from around the world.” From an aftermarket perspective, to enable customers to look after the servicing of their assets, manage costs and increase flexibility to better respond to market conditions, they have introduced the Bell Care Package. This is available across the entire Bell product range and provides customers with a cost-effective and relevant product to manage machine service costs according to their needs and budget.

Customers take centre-stage

Staying close to one’s customers in these trying times is of utmost importance. “Customers are at the coalface as it were, and by staying close to them we can better understand their business needs and the prevailing trends in their industry,” says McNeill. “In these times it’s probably even more of a requirement to stay close to one’s customers because competition is tough, and the market is gradually shrinking. Bell achieves this through the one-onone contact our sales and customer support teams maintain with our customer base.” He says their commitment to always providing the highest support levels and the company’s family ethos, where customers and strategic partners are part of the extended Bell family, is what differentiates them from competitors. It is also more than delivering strong machines, it’s about reliable support too explains McNeill. “Being able to provide a valuable aftermarket product and service offering that serves customers throughout the lifetime of their machine is a huge focus area. In addition to the global preowned equipment website, we have introduced direct door-to-door delivery of parts as a convenience to customers, to ensure the safety of staff during Covid and to save in terms of travel time and costs.” He says understanding customers’ businesses and their needs are of utmost importance. “We believe this is reflected in the guidance our customers receive from our sales team during the purchasing process and in the aftermarket offerings that we have to support our customers throughout the lifecycle of their machine.” And McNeill says that although cost cannot be ignored in these economic times, reliability is most definitely also a factor. “Downtime comes at a huge cost to an operation, so customers understand the importance of both machine reliability and having the lowest owning/ operating cost.”

Bell Equipment Southern Africa,

+27 (0) 11 928 9846, susanmy@bell.co.za, www.bellequipment.com