Conference 7.286::digital

    �So, are there other countries where the sun is shining today or is
    �Belgium the last island ?
    
    If not the last, one of them anyway... and even in Belgium, it's mostly
    rainy. :-)
    
    In fact, some other smaller European countries aren't doing *that* bad,
    but it's not enough volume to save the corporation.
    

    Hi,
    
    I'm in Indonesia, a country in South East Asia. I also see the sun is
    shinning and we are still the second biggest computer vendor in term
    of business and I think also in technical expertise. As you can expect
    the number one is our big brother.
    
    Our CAGR, I believe, is more than 20%. We achieved our number last FY
    but I have no information for this FY. This FY we change from
    distributor to be a joint-venture company (50:50).
    
    s/NT

    Hi there,
    	it is 5-6 years since I wrote a reply to this conference. Mostly I
    have been too busy working.
    
    	Yes, in my country (Australia) it is o.k. too. That is if you just
    concentrate on the latest financial numbers. But we suffered a lot of
    pain to turn our fiscal performance around. The concentration was on
    cost-cutting. This was necessary, but it has gone on too long. We lost
    a lot of good people who were retrenched. Now we try to sell more
    business, but we often lack the resources to deliver the kind of
    service our customers want.
    
    	I'm concerned about the diminished value of people. People are our
    greatest asset. The Digital culture has depended on the caring for
    eachother, depended on the pride we have in eachother and our company,
    depended on our sense of dedication. I see people all around me getting
    burnt out as they struggle to help our company survive. The incentive
    to be dedicated is disappearing, as Digital continues the downward
    spiral of endless cost-cutting. When are we going to stop?
    
    	I've always been proud and happy to work for Digital because we
    have the greatest products, and because I get a real buzz out of
    solving "impossible" problems with our technology. We've always
    achieved this through the skills, energy and dedication of the best
    bunch of people I've ever worked with. 
    
    	The next topic after this one is a survey of company loyalty. My
    loyalty is to the excellent group of people I've made friends with in
    my 6� years in Digital. My loyalty to the company itself has greatly
    diminished, as I've felt the pain of the constant focus on cost
    cutting. It hurts.
    
    	I strongly believe that we need to stop behaving as a "vendor". a
    vendor sells "products". Clients today don't want to merely buy
    products. If we compete with all the other vendors, we are locked into
    to endless spiral of price/performance competition, where the focus is
    on bang for bucks. Our margins will be ever-diminishing. The money left
    over to pay for pre-sales, after-sales support, logistics, R&D etc.
    will continue to disappear fast. Pretty soon we won't be able to afford
    to keep our traditional style of branch offices open.
    
    	I strongly believe we need to begin behaving as a "Consultative
    Selling" organisation. To do this we need to get to understand our
    client's businesses thoroughly; we need to look for ways to improve our
    client's profits, or improve our client's level of service to their
    customers, or reduce our client's costs. This means being more
    enterprising. This means making straw proposals for profit-improvement
    to our client, then asking for a share of the profit gains, or asking
    for a share of the cost savings. To do all this we have to stop
    emphasizing product, and begin emphasinzing the wonderful abilities of
    our talented Digital people. i.e. we need to exploit Digital's greatest
    asset, our people!
    
    In 10 years time, I still want to be working for Digital. But I don't
    want to suffer the agony of cost-cutting for the next 10 years. I want
    to spend the next 10 years having fun, fulfilling my potential,
    extending my own level of excellence, working together with a great
    bunch of people to achieve miracles, helping my clients to be 
    wonderfully successful. 
    
    For us all to be still here in 10 years, being successful and feeling
    very positive about ourselves, we need to stop behaving like a vendor,
    because that's just dumb.
    
    						my 2�
    						Bruce

    re .3
    
    bruce, 
    
    you should write here more often. your statements are quite accurate.

    Hi,
    
    My country is also doing well. Last FY we managed to keep the revenue
    flat (about dfl. 930M = ~ $ 500M), but operational profit increased from
    dfl. 77M to dfl. 124M. From the profit we took dfl. 57M, dfl 55M for
    restructuring respectively.
    
    Henny Olthof, The Netherlands (close to Belgium)