On our first day in Halmstad after a bit of a rough start we had the pleasure that John Hansson, president of the Getinge International AB came to the University of Halmstad to talk about his business and how the company had become so successful. Hansson has worked at Getinge for about 20 years at various positions through the years and has gained an excessive insight of the company. His presentation was very authentic and inspiring and gave us an insight into the company’s strategy and the future outlook.
Getinge is a global medical technology company focusing on the expansion and strengthening of its product portfolio and market presence. Since the IPO in 1993 the company has been growing sharply over the years. Nowadays it has subsidiaries and manufacturing plants across the world and we were curious how such a small company could become so successful? What was their strategy?
John Hansson explained that the Getinge Group is made up of three product groups – Medical Systems; Extended Care and Infection Control. These three categories are however also branded under three different names as each Brand has a different brand promise. This John Hansson explained is highly important and was the reason why not all products could not be simply carried under the Getinge Group Name.
The Medical System under the brand name Maquet is a top of the line product with gold and leader standard. Extended Care – Arjohuntleigh has the message “with people in mind” and communicates more soft values. Infection Control which has the brand name Getinge carries the message “always with you”.
Getinge Group had at some stage considered to merge the brands but had decided against them and only connects them with the Getinge Group name below the main brand name. John Hansson explained again how crucial it is to know what story you want to tell and communicate to your customers.
The second cornerstone for a successful business that John Hansson mentioned was: “Always try to be the nr. 1 in your business field”. This means to have to highest turnover, customers know you at the best and you can profit from economies of scale. If this is not possible then you should get out of the business – a strategy which Getinge is pursuing for years indeed.
Finally the third cornerstone is customer satisfaction. This is why 90% of the sales are done through own sales companies and service personnel. The slogan “think global, act local” is thereby Getinges philosophy. The company works globally, however their customers are local. Therefore it is highly important to think local and this is best done by employing local people. Another way to reach high customer satisfaction is to offer complete service/solution which is achieved by acquisitions.
In course of the presentation more and more questions came up and a question answer session or discussion round started. John Hansson gave comprehensive responds and was also using drawings on the board to illustrate his content. For instance when he was talking about lean logistics or the different product portfolio in emerging vs. developing countries. He responded also to critical questions like the ones concerning their sales globalization strategy and CSR issues in those emerging markets. Production in Brazil and the challenges this attractive market offered was also discussed. One of them was the presence of corruption. Mr. Hanson was open while answering our questions, and he made very clear that the Company’s official guidelines was to be away from any kind of unlawful actions. However, the most interesting part was when he explained how they behave in such environment. It was explained that in bids for supplying to the public sector no “fast money” or any other kind of bribery was involved. Some specific requirements for the proposal that only Getinge and one or two more companies could fulfil, are placed on the guide lines for the Bid, and with that they could increase their chance of success. However, the explanation of those requirements, like what are they, why they exist, why they are necessary, and who decides on them, was not very clear.
Time flew and it was a pity that time was up as many students still had several questions and we would have liked to interrogate Mr. Hansson a bit longer. Nonetheless we had 2 exciting hours and would like to thank Mr. Hansson for taking his limited time at this point again.
IBE in SWEDEN 