Three years later, under the leadership of non-commissioned Major Dinh Thi Dung, Viettel Store was reborn and turned into one of the leading retailers in Vietnam with revenue and profit reaching record levels.
“Surmounting the storm”
Sharing with the People’s Army Newspaper, non-commissioned Major Dinh Thi Dung, Director of Viettel Store - a retail system with nearly 400 agents in 63 provinces and cities across the country, emphasized that determination is the key to solve any obstacles.
The 2017-2018 period was Viettel Store’s most difficult time. Knowing this situation, Viettel’s Board of Directors decided to appoint non-commissioned Major Dinh Thi Dung as Director of Viettel Store and required her to revive Viettel Store at all costs.
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Non-commissioned Major Dinh Thi Dung (left) inspects a Viettel Store shop. |
Major Dinh Thi Dung analyzed problems Viettel Store was confronting. If the store could not handle the inventory, it would suffer heavy losses; therefore, she looked for new operational methods for the store, she said.
Taking full advantage of applying the product management tool on ERP - a retail management software for managing detailed information of the inventory, Dung promoted the application of information technology in Viettel Store’s administration and management activities. Therefore, the inventory was settled in a timely manner and Viettel Store was considered the best inventory management retail system among cell phone retail stores in Vietnam.
The issue of inventory was solved. Major Dinh Thi Dung continued seeking ways to improve the efficiency of the retail chain. She decided to close a series of inefficient supermarkets and maintain around 300 remaining agents. Meanwhile, she proposed to the Party Committees of the Viettel Trading and Import-Export Limited Liability Company and Viettel Store to implement the “training and hunting human resources” policy.
Up to now, the entire Viettel Store supermarkets have been effectively operated. The rate of supermarkets making profit has reached more than 90 percent.
Optimizing human resources
Along with closing a series of Viettel supermarkets, Mrs. Dinh Thi Dung made a decision to lay off more than 1,000 employees. According to the Viettel Store Director, the whole staff should acquire multi-tasking skills. It means an employee can work as a salesperson, a technician, a cashier, an accountant, and others.
In order to increase the quality of transformation model, Mrs. Dinh Thi Dung and Viettel Store’s Board of Directors organized training courses to improve the whole staff’s capabilities.
This model has contributed to optimizing human resources in work process. For example, in the past, a supermarket needs around 10 or even 12 staff to run its business activities. Now, only five employees can operate a supermarket. Thanks to multi-tasking skills, Viettel Store’s staff can deal with arising issues during customer service and respond to customer requests.
In addition, employees’ salary has been calculated based on the number of products they sold. If there are no products sold, Viettel Store will pay salary to employees for up to 3 months. After that, they will be dismissed if they continue selling nothing.
In this way, the quality of sales services and the qualification of staff have been enhanced. Also, the quality of their material and spiritual life has been raised.
Keys to success
Being decisive to create changes is a key factor making Major Dinh Thi Dung and Viettel Store gain remarkable achievements.
Amid the complicated developments of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in Southern provinces, the number of employees of Viettel Store system decreased by nearly 10 times. Several agencies were in danger of being closed.
After many sleepless nights, Mrs. Dinh Thi Dung converted the sales strategy from offline to online. Moreover, staff complied with the “three on-site” method and shifts. The change has brought Viettel Store to the top of the list of retail enterprises in Vietnam reaching the revenue of nearly VND 7,000 billion, increasing by 76 percent compared to 2020.
Difficulties create opportunities to make breakthroughs. This motto has helped the Viettel Store Director achieves success. For many years in a row, Viettel Store has ranked among the Top 10 most prestigious retail brands in Vietnam. Especially, non-commissioned Major Dinh Thi Dung was voted as a typical individual with the best performance in 2021 globally.
Translated by Quynh Oanh