Management Motivations is a new series of articles by Quectel’s senior executives that explores their management styles, approaches to the challenges of further developing the company and what drives them to lead and succeed.

Norbert Muhrer, President & CSO

Number 4: The complexities of managing a global team

When I joined Quectel, it was clear we had to build our global organisation with a structure of local decision making by recognized industry leaders so as to be truly close to our customers and quick in our actions.  We have hired more and more international leaders and have radically strengthened the team which in turn has transformed our business processes. We have inserted the best practices that the senior leaders brought with them.

I believe that good management is about allowing managers to autonomously drive their own decisions along clear targets and strategy, with certain structured check points along the way and frequent communication on day-to-day matters. Once everyone is clear about the strategy and where we need to go and are clear on the targets, local management should be able to drive the measures needed to get there. By allowing managers to drive their own decisions, we put in place the measures needed to succeed in their locality. Don’t forget that there are significant technical and cultural differences between markets, and our local management have expertise in their geographies which creates distinct strengths for us.  We also demand our managers to be agile, fresh and sharp in their minds and actions as to what to do next, which improvement to launch, which market vertical to attack. We never rest.

Global markets are in different stages of development and technology changes so fast but not all economies do it at the same pace. We saw 3G coming and now it is end of life in several regions. More industrialized economies are moving quickly to 5G as they have a business and consumer base which are willing to cover the cost, whilst developing countries are more driven by basic and cost effective requirements and are OK with the existing, yet still state of the art technology. So, the local competence to serve customers with suitable products to make them successful in their markets is key.

The more complex the markets get in technology, the more differences there are between markets. India is super-different to Australia.  Korea resembles Japan but is hardly comparable to Spain and Italy. Having said that, Quectel actually benefits from a heightened level of complexity. It sounds strange but that is due to our business model – we are tuned to efficiently manage complexity.  We have vast R&D resources and are very willing to invest in factories, in products, in certification teams, in field engineering teams and in local Sales and R&D.  This complexity creates a challenge and those companies that are ready with their full R&D team and are continuing to increase their teams’ size, will be the first ones to meet the challenge. That’s where Quectel is decidedly more determined, willing and able to invest than any other competitor.

We stand apart in this challenging and complex market. We look to the left and see that the international competitors don’t have the kind of resource we have as their cost base is too high. We look to the right and see the Chinese companies – they can afford to build a local team on low cost resources, but do they have the international side of the business to feed it? Mostly not.  Quectel has both – we serve the international and the Chinese market equally successfully and it is our aspiration not just to be global number one but to be number one in each market and region we serve. We want to be the best, in customer service, in product range and quality, in global support and to be the most affordable in cost.