GOOD HIRING GONE WRONG AT

OR-TRAX INDIA

MMS-A,HRM Group,
Contributors:

#4 Karishma Alwani
#5 Anjali Bajaj
#9 Ruchita Bhatia
#87 Priyanka Punjabi
#90 Jyoti Rajwani

Introduction
Puneet Sagar studied the calm face of Abraham Titus,
who had just told him: I have decided to resign from
Ortrax India.
He had been expecting this; the symptoms had been
surfacing for some time now, the reasons had become
apparent, yet, now; he wondered where his firm,
Globalheads, had gone wrong. Eight months ago,
Puneet had placed Abraham at Ortrax India, as
business director, next in command to the MD. Netting
Abraham for that job had not been easy.
Puneet could understand urgency. At Ortrax there
hadnt been a re-investment in the brand or the people
because until the 90s, India wasnt top priority for its
international parent. In a low-competition market,
Ortrax had survived with its clutter of products and
International did not seem too keen to change
anything. With the changed economic scenario of the
90s, competition brought Ortrax to its knees. More than
the declining sales, the company recognized that it was
not seen as the best employer and that it was not able
to attract bright talent.
It need to set in force a dramatic change process and
that can happen only if we have the right man to do the
navigating. A person who is focused on the market, the
consumer and the customer.
It was clear to Puneet that priority was the restructuring
of the businesses. After years of sporadic selling of an
assorted range of toothpastes, toilet cleaners, fabriccare products, hair-care products and some skin-care

items, he wanted to bring focus into the companys

businesses. Naturally, Globalheads derived its brief for
the candidate search and the required business
competencies, from the restructuring agenda.
Abrahams 18 years long experience had been in
professionally-run companies. Since liberalization, he
had changed three jobs. He had come to be known as a
person capable of breathing life into near-dead
situations. Rejuvenating dying business, repositioning a
business or category, revamping the supply chain, and
redefining businesses became the hallmarks of his
experience.

Background of the company:

The first and only in the surgical industry founded in the
year 2012 revolutionalizing the way medical device
representatives and surgical facilities communicate. ORTRAX is a HIPAA compliant, electronic application
allowing operating rooms the ability to furnish surgical
schedules to vendor representatives who supply
implants, instrumentation, and support at their facility.
Free of PHI, and only accessible to vendors credentialed
at your campus, OR-TRAXs database was developed to
restore time to healthcare professionals, strengthen
HIPAA compliance, and reduce OR expenses resulting
from vendor tardiness.

Specialities:
Healthcare Technology, Operating Room Scheduling, Healthcare
Provider to vendor communication, Surgical services efficiency, HHS
& HIPAA Compliance.

Culture of the company (1 page)

Write about the culture of the company. This section should create a feeling among the reader
about the working condition, people and workplace dynamics prevalent. This should include
challenges and responsibilities of the company. In addition, it should include the career
opportunities or threat for decision makers and other colleagues etc.

About the INDUSTRY &

COMPETITOR
The medical device industry is one of the biggest
industries in healthcare, driven by innovation and new
technologies. The last decade has seen an
unprecedented growth in innovative and improved
technologies, which has led to the development of
state-of-the-art medical devices and catalyzed growth
and advancement in the healthcare industry.

Geographic segmentation
The US medical device industry is the global leader with
sales of around $136 billion, which represents
approximately 45% of the global market, according to
the US Government Accountability Office (or GAO) 2014
statistics. According to Espicoms 2014 report, the US
medical device market is projected to grow at a
compound annual growth rate (or CAGR) of 6.1%
between 2014 and 2017. With more than 7,000 medical
devices companies in the US, which are mostly small
and medium enterprises (or SMEs), that employ around
400,000 people directly and more than 2 million people
indirectly, the industry is highly fragmented. Europe
and China are the second and third largest medical
device markets, respectively.

Key players

The top five players in the medical devices industry in terms of

revenues are Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), General Electric (GE),
Medtronic (MDT), Baxter International (BAX), and Cardinal Health.

MANAGEMENT STYLE &

PRACTICES

The management style in Ortrax India is bureaucratic in

nature. Though such a style is mostly found in
Government organisations our research showed it to be
a part of the core management of the company. In our
case research we found that management was very
particular in following the rule book. The process of the
desired change was very slow. Above everything the
tall format of hierarchy caused the movement of
decisions very slow. Our research also showed that the
headoffice was very rigid . Even though ideas of
restructuring was provided to them they accepted it on
paper but not in practice. For e.g. the departmental
head was explained where the change was needed, he
would just say Lets keep this on hold for now.

Decision Dilemma
Puneet Sagar studied the calm face of Abraham Titus,
who had just told him: I have decided to resign from
Ortrax India. He had been expecting this; the
symptoms had been surfacing for some time now, the
reasons had become apparent.

At Ortrax there hadnt been a re-investment in the

brand or the people because until the 90s, India wasnt
top priority for its international parent. In a lowcompetition market, Ortrax had survived with its clutter
of products and International did not seem too keen to
change anything. With the changed economic scenario
of the 90s, competition brought Ortrax to its knees.

More than the declining sales, the company recognized

that it was not seen as the best employer and that it
was not able to attract bright talent.

The Ortrax case begs an answer to one simple

question: could Globalheads have seen in advance that
Abraham Ti-tus was unlikely to be successful as a
business director at Ortrax India?

The company was in a dilemma to understand the

reason behind his resignation, the slow faced
transformation and was also on a look out for someone
to champion the company to heights. They couldnt
understand what went wrong and the case analyzes the
situation to make the required observations.

Symptom
Structure is easy to change but the mind set took
longer.

During our research, it was found that Ortrax India was

anxious, unwilling to let the
old model dilute, unsure of letting the new model in.

The Top Management's plan for India was different;

they wanted to set India as a production base for
Thailand and Malaysia.

Abraham was a young mind, who matches the needs of

the dynamic environment with his fast paced solutions,
while company wants seven different people to
examine the recommendations, 12 different
presentations to be made to different committees,
before they agree. And each of these various people
would examine how it all fitted into their own business
plan and what was in it for them.

He was the head of a business, with a dotted line to the

country head. But for his business, he was reporting to
the business head for Asia Pacific. Then there were
other heads of other businesses who sat in different

offices in Asia Pacific, which also have an India

business. But somewhere budgets got allocated to
businesses on a global basis.
Also, the grouping of businesses under different heads
was different in Asia Pacific. Thus skin care and hair
care was under one head and fabric care and hygiene
under another while foot care and health was under a
third. In India, there were two businesses, personal care
and household care, of which personal care was the
larger, accounting for 72% of the business.
So, if Abraham wanted investments in hair care in India,
he would have to pull money out of health care, but
while he would, in principle, have the assent of his
business head (skin and hair) in Asia Pacific, he needed
the approval of the health care business head in Kuala
Lumpur and so on...

From market sentiments at that time following things

were understood about the company's situation:

1. Market was very optimistic of Abraham's approach

since he was bringing in a much needed change.
2. The old team, however, was resisting change and the
fast pace.
3. Environment for cultivating change was not there nor
was Abraham in a position to do it himself i.e.

restructuring plan was not fully sold to the parent

company.

And the fact remained that given the matrix structure,

it was critical for Abraham to continuously network with
each of these people, reaffirm his loyalty and reassure
them that all products would be nurtured and
reinforced in India. That meant a person in Abrahams
role would really spend 20% of his time on nonbusiness activity

Conclusion
Globalheads was driven solely by the restructuring
agenda and went about finding the best turnaround
artiste.

Abraham seemed the right fit for Ortrax.

One, he had an amazing insight into consumer minds.
He could anticipate consumer needs much before the
market even came to a weak agreement on it. He could
sit with qualitative groups for long hours and dissect
the product till the solution came to him, whatever the
area, be it product engineering, distribution, or even
positioningHe had an uncanny ability to home in on
the real issue and convert it into a plus for his company.
And translate them into unique advantages.
Two, he had a terrific ability to think differently. His
approach was fix it even if it is not broke. He iterated
repeatedly till the solution could not be optimized any
more.
Three, despite his strong academic background and the
systems-driven environments he
was often in, he was not obsessed with processes or
systems. These fitted well with the needs
of Ortrax, which needed a cultural change, an insight
into what its customers really wanted, and
quick results.

Abraham was indeed a great operator but was

evidently ineffective within Ortrax India. What
Globalheads had completely ignored was the
prevailing culture of the company, the matrix
organization & the significant tension/conflict
between the various business divisions. All these
operating conditions pointed towards certain
critical competencies ability to manage
conflict, building consensus, managing relationships &
outstanding interpersonal & social skills. Abraham was
just the opposite - he enjoyed taking independent
decisions and had a single - minded focus on his
objectives.

If the competencies for success had been elicited and

clearly articulated early on in the search. Globalheads
(executive search firm) would have been in a position
to advice Ortrax against hiring Abraham. The solution
could well have been an individual with the right
combine of functional and behavioural
competence.

Through a series of meetings and discussions with the

client, the search consultant should have tried to elicit
the overall strategy and the frame-work within which
the company operates, the job and its key deliverables
as also the organization's culture. The selection
process, therefore, must focus on determining these

behaviours and skill sets in the previous track record of

the individual.

In addition to this, we also observe that had the

resistence from the employees been better managed,
Abraham would have been able to improve the
situation on ground level at least.

Summing up, right man was hired for the wrong job in
an organisation where nobody championed the need to
change.

Reference
http://www.ortrax.com
http://www.ortrax.com/compliance/