On July 26, Dongfeng Nissan official micro issued an important personnel adjustment announcement. Chen Hao, member of the Standing Committee of the Party Committee and deputy general manager of Dongfeng Company, member of the Party Committee and executive vice president of Dongfeng Limited, is no longer the deputy general manager of Dongfeng Nissan. Gao Guolin, former general manager of the operation and management department of Dongfeng Motor Group Co., Ltd., took over Chen Hao as vice president of Dongfeng Limited and deputy general manager of Dongfeng Nissan.
Judging from most of the recent news about Dongfeng Nissan, the momentum of Dongfeng Nissan in the era of 13 million vehicles is booming, and Chen Hao is also well received, and the replacement of the Chinese leader at this time is somewhat intriguing. But when the author deeply analyzed the embarrassment behind Dongfeng Nissan, he also learned how heavy the burden and pressure on Gao Guolin was.
Gao Guolin, native to Dongfeng
In fact, about Gao Guolin, a native of Dongfeng, the outside world does not know much about him. Based on his resume, most of them are financially related.
In July 1988, Gao Guolin graduated from Xi'an Jiaotong University majoring in forging and was assigned to work in the design department of the die factory of the second automobile, the predecessor of Dongfeng Company. In 1996, he obtained a master's degree in business administration from Zhongnan University of Finance and Economics. In November 1998, he served as the director of the investment department of Shenzhen Dongfeng Real Estate. In February 2000, he became the director of the Finance Department of Fengshen Automobile Co., Ltd. (the predecessor of Dongfeng Nissan).
In 2003, after the establishment of Dongfeng Co., Ltd. and Nissan Motor in a comprehensive joint venture, Gao Guolin served as the deputy director of the Budget Management Department of the Financial Accounting Headquarters of Dongfeng Limited, the director of the Planning Department of Dongfeng Nissan and the director of the Horizontal Business Department of the Marketing Headquarters.
During this period, some media have defined Gao Guolin in this way, and he has given full play to the professionalism of financial skills, and has even been praised as the "chief financial officer" of Dongfeng Nissan. He established a two-way reporting financial management system, and improved the system construction, management process and internal control management mechanism of Dongfeng Nissan in all aspects of finance.
In October 2010, Gao Guolin was promoted to chief of the passenger car financial accounting headquarters of Dongfeng Limited Financial Accounting Headquarters. In February 2017, After the establishment of Dongfeng Venucia Automobile Company, he served as a deputy general manager. After that, Gao Guolin was transferred to Dongfeng Company and successively served as the director of the financial and accounting department and the general manager of the operation and management department of the group.
In fact, from the perspective of resume, in this talent-rich automotive industry, Gao Guolin is not the one who is outstanding, but from his many years of Dongfeng career, he can at least see the depth of his understanding of the Dongfeng system. Moreover, although the predecessor Chen Hao laid a good foundation for him, Gao Guolin also faced a series of challenges.
Chen Hao's military achievements were outstanding
In fact, former deputy general manager Chen Hao, as the number one on the Chinese side, has been at the helm of Dongfeng Nissan since September 2018, during which the company has experienced many rounds of challenges, including the epidemic.
In terms of sales, sales in the three years from 2018 to 2020 were 1.17 million, 1.17 million and 1.13 million, respectively. According to the latest sales data released by Dongfeng Nissan, in the first half of this year, the cumulative sales of Japanese product brands exceeded 560,000 vehicles, an increase of 17.8% year-on-year.
Within Dongfeng, which attaches great importance to sales, Dongfeng Nissan has almost become one of the few business units under Dongfeng that maintains stable sales. In contrast, sales of joint ventures such as DPCA and Dongfeng Yueda Kia have shrunk significantly over the past few years.
Because of this, Chen Hao was able to work in Dongfeng Company, Dongfeng Limited, and Dongfeng Nissan Three-level Company. It should be known that within the Dongfeng company system, Dongfeng Limited is a joint venture company jointly held by Dongfeng Company and Nissan, and the headquarters of the two companies are located in Wuhan, less than one kilometer apart.
In addition, as a specific vehicle business unit, Dongfeng Nissan in Guangzhou is part of Dongfeng Limited and is a "third-level company" under the Dongfeng company system.
In addition to the above two positions, Chen Hao also served as a member of the Standing Committee of the Party Committee and deputy general manager of Dongfeng Company. An unwritten rule within the Dongfeng system is that leading cadres generally do not hold important positions in the parent company to the business unit, spanning the three levels of the company.
For Chen Hao, Dongfeng Nissan said, "Chen Hao has been working in Dongfeng Nissan for a long time, and has made important contributions to Dongfeng Nissan's high-quality surpassing million vehicles and continuously challenging high goals. After serving as the leader of Dongfeng Company, he had the courage to bear the pressure and continue to promote the stable development of Dongfeng Limited and Dongfeng Nissan. ”
It is undeniable that Dongfeng Nissan's market performance after the epidemic has reached an unprecedented height, but at the same time, the more prominent the advantages, the more obvious the shortcomings will be exposed.
Gao Guolin's challenge
It can be said that Gao Guolin took on a difficult battle this time. His task is, how to continue to stabilize Dongfeng Nissan's million base plate and challenge to higher goals? Under Dongfeng Nissan Motor, how should the Japanese product brand and venucia brand develop synergistically?
In the author's opinion, the first is how Venucia stopped the three-year continuous decline.
Since independence in 2017, Dongfeng Venucia has shown a downward sales trend for three consecutive years, while the cumulative sales volume in the first half of this year was 34,101 vehicles, which is lower than Xuanyi's 41,191 vehicles in a single month in June.
Earlier, Gao Guolin had suffered with Venucia, and now Venucia has returned to Dongfeng Nissan, and Gao Guolin has been promoted to deputy general manager of Dongfeng Nissan, and how to completely support the Venucia brand is one of the main problems it will solve.
The second is that in addition to Xuanyi, it needs to be explosive. At present, although Dongfeng Nissan's models cover the segments of cars, SUVs, MPVs and other markets, in the field of cars, Xuanyi contributes nearly 50% to Dongfeng Nissan's sales, and other models urgently need breakthroughs.
Not only that, in order to maintain the overall sales, Dongfeng Nissan once maintained the situation that the new and old Xuanyi were sold on the same stage, so it was criticized. In the first half of this year, Xuanyi sold 256,000 vehicles, down 12.05% year-on-year, which can only be said to be expected.
In contrast, in the SUV camp, which has been more profitable and Dongfeng Nissan has been performing well before, the cumulative sales volume in 2020 was 386,000 units, down 18.7% year-on-year. As the sales force of SUVs, X-Trail sold 169,000 terminals in 2020, down 20.3% year-on-year. Moreover, if it is compared with the same level of Haoying and CRV, its market still has a lot of room for improvement.
In addition, in order to make up for the shortcomings and regain competitiveness, Dongfeng Nissan plans to launch a new generation of X-Trail at the end of this month. However, for the new generation of X-Trail's use of three-cylinder engines, the outside world has been talking about it, which has also laid the groundwork for future market performance. You know, although there is a variable compression ratio of this Nissan "black technology", but the competitors at the same price are all four-cylinder machines.
And after the previous popular models Such as Ford Focus and Buick Yinglang replaced with three-cylinder engines, sales and word of mouth fell sharply. For the new generation of X-Trail, this will be a huge challenge.
Third, if you look at the sales volume of the entire market, Toyota sold 1.8 million vehicles in China in 2020, a sharp increase of 10.9% year-on-year; Honda sold 1.62 million vehicles in China, a 4.7% year-on-year increase, and set a record for annual sales. Comparing Nissan, which also sold 1.17 million units in 2019 to 1.13 million units in 2020, it is somewhat unsatisfactory.
In this case, after Gao Guolin took office, there are many challenges to be faced, and how to turn challenges into opportunities depends on Gao Guolin's next actions.