Conference 7.286::digital

    What happened to Dick Poulsen, who was VP & President, Europe?
    
    Just checked his elf entry, and he is now VP Channels based in MRO.
    
    Musical chairs at the top again...
    
    q
    

    Dick's retirement announcement was published to us about 6 weeks ago.
    
    I'll go and listen to the new chap who will be speaking to us at 16:00
    today.
    
    Paul

    Is anyone keeping count of the IBMer's now running Digital?

	I wonder if I go off and join IBM for a few years I could come
	back and be a VP? :-)

			Alfred

    re: .3
    
    Hmmm -- It took until reply 3 to get the IBM hit again.  Someone's
    slipping.
    
    I have an idea -- What if --In the IBM culture -- there were but a few
    people who had a better idea -- BUT-- were prevented/stifled/squished
    or something from executing on that better idea?
    
    Ya' know -- The corporate culture just wouldn't see reality.  It
    thought it knew what the customer wanted  and would tell the customer
    -- "This is what you want."  
    
    Sort of like what we have been going through the past few years.
    
    Now, let's say these "Better idea" folks from (arrrgghhhh) IBMarrrgghh,
    saw a place where they could make a difference.  Let's say that place
    is Digital.
    
    They get hired and hopefully they achieve their objectives.
    
    I am struck with a couple of things:
    
    o  I don't know if any of these folks are worth a #$^& -- But it doesn't
    matter because I believe Lucente and Palmer know how to hire and
    wouldn't do a bad hire at the risk of screwing up their career paths.
    
    o Why is it we automatically assume that if the person came from IBM,
    they're JUNQUE.
    
    I would suggest that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw
    stones.

    re: .5
    
<    I have an idea -- What if --In the IBM culture -- there were but a few
<    people who had a better idea -- BUT-- were prevented/stifled/squished
<    or something from executing on that better idea?
<    
<    Ya' know -- The corporate culture just wouldn't see reality.  It
<    thought it knew what the customer wanted  and would tell the customer
<    -- "This is what you want."  
<    
<    Sort of like what we have been going through the past few years.
<    
<    Now, let's say these "Better idea" folks from (arrrgghhhh) IBMarrrgghh,
<    saw a place where they could make a difference.  Let's say that place
<    is Digital.
<    
<    They get hired and hopefully they achieve their objectives.
    
Hmmm.  So, these guys get to be rather senior VPs, despite not fitting
in with IBM's culture.  Well, I suppose that makes sense to some people.

    I wonder about people who leave a company like IBM, which is probably
    cleaning house, and go to another company in similar shape, who is
    hiring anyone with a slightly different slant on the business, in the
    hope that they might be able to help our situation. I don't expect the
    newcomers to be any more in tune with what's wrong as the rest of the
    club.
    	I know it's cynical, but there's not much more left for me to be.
    As I've written before, "Thank goodness for the locals."

    I just got out of the talk to employees he gave.
    
    In a few words, he seems very strict on having people carry out orders,
    contest them before, but once the decision is taken - excecute. And he
    is very hot on people finishing projects properly.
    
    He presented a 3 objective, 12 action plan for us to return to
    profitability. Essentially Customer Focus, Internal efficiecy etc -
    messages we have hear before.
    
    "Right sizing" will happen again in Europe in the next 30 days and for
    the last time in a while as we are lead to understand.
    
    Time will tell if he is going to make any impact.
    
    Paul

    There is an article in Wall Street today (Page B4) regarding this
    announcement. He is known as:
    
    "No-nonsense executive with an eye for detail rather than grand
    stratgeies"
    
    Let's wish him/us luck

    
    Why don't we move into all of IBM's offices worldwide so we don't
    have to hire any Veeps from them anymore.
    
    Are we coming out with a new 370 running DOS/VSE?
    
    Oh well.

    Come to think of it, our general manager in Holland is ex-IBM and IBM
    are building their new Dutch headquarters just down the road from
    our headquarters in Utrecht.
    
    The plot thickens.
    
    Charles Mallo

    
    The nordic country group manager is also ex-IBM. Yea, the plot
    thickens. Maybe in a few years we can read "The Olsen Inheritance"
    by Robert Ludlum.
    

	Is there a transcript of his talk, so all the rest of us in Europe
	can know what he said?

	Thanks,
	Heather

    

                      *** LETTER TO ALL EMPLOYEES ***

             From: Vincenzo Damiani, President, Digital Europe


    Today is my first day in Digital and I am delighted to have joined the 
    company and also to be given the opportunity to be part of the team 
    during the challenging times ahead.

    I know Digital extremely well. For many years now I've followed the 
    company as a competitor in the European marketplace, and during that 
    time I developed a very healthy respect for the ability of Digital's 
    people and for the quality of the Company's products and services.

    I've also had the unique opportunity during the last 30 days of being 
    briefed on all aspects of the company's business operations in Europe 
    and talking with a number of key partners and customers.  This has 
    enabled me to immediately look at how to grow our business and improve 
    our profitability, with a realistic set of objectives with clear 
    measurement and ownership.

    Our overall Company goal in Europe, which is the same for each of you 
    individually, is very simply: we should have SATISFIED CUSTOMERS. 

    We have put in place an agenda which has three objectives and ten 
    action points:- 

                               Objective 1:
                         Create Sustainable Growth
  1. 	Focus on SME customers.
  2. 	Team-up with partners and develop alliances.
  3. 	Create new opportunities for services and consulting.
  4. 	Develop specific industry and product markets.
  5. 	Improve distribution capability and market coverage.
  6. 	Increase marketing and selling competency.

                               Objective 2:
                            Increase Efficiency
  7. 	Achieve optimum sizing of organization and reduce organization 
        structure.
  8. 	Consolidate support activities.

                                   - 2 -



                               Objective 3:
                         Optimize Customer Focused
                     Management Systems and Processes
   9.	Focus on processes and process ownership.
  10.	Show leadership, communicate more, and more efficiently.


    I will be outlining the details behind each of these actions points in 
    a special DVN to be broadcast on Wednesday, January 12.  Within the 
    next three days, I will also name the managers who will be given 
    responsibility for each of the projects which we are putting in place 
    to support each one of these action points and also a number of other 
    projects related to our Agenda.  

    Their tasks will be clear as will the timelines for completion of each 
    project.  I will make sure that all of this is communicated widely 
    through the European organization and that I report progress to you on 
    a regular basis.

    I believe that we need to move forward with a sense of urgency, a 
    common set of objectives and actions, and the single, overriding goal: 
    SATISFIED CUSTOMERS.

    I am confident that I can count on your constant focus on delivering 
    what it is that our customers need in a way that leaves them in no 
    doubt about our commitment to their success.  

    I want to close with a personal note. We will only be able to have 
    SATISFIED CUSTOMERS by building a motivated, aggressive team made up by 
    individuals who share the same goals and objectives.

    I look forward to meeting each of you in the coming days and weeks.


    Regards,

    Vincenzo Damiani.
    
[ends]


Recipient List:

To:    
Jan Bansema
Marjan van den Buijs
Peter van caspel
Piet Dienaar
Adri van Driel
Rob Eisink
Leo Hofman
Andre Hoornweg
Ellis Hopman
Lay Liem
Huib Mik
Rik Roncken
Jan Schollaert
Evert Schuiteman
Martin Smeets
Jelle veldman
Vincent Visser
Rob van Vlerken
Marcel Willems
Peter Windmeijer

>                               Objective 1:
>                         Create Sustainable Growth
>  1. 	Focus on SME customers.
>  2. 	Team-up with partners and develop alliances.
>  3. 	Create new opportunities for services and consulting.
>  4. 	Develop specific industry and product markets.
>  5. 	Improve distribution capability and market coverage.
>  6. 	Increase marketing and selling competency.

How about:
   0.   Don't use unexplained acronyms.

    SME = Small Medium Enterprises (and has doen for at least 2 years)
    
    

    Wow, how clever, many of the other areas, are working on only talking
    to the "BIG" customers (and then not doing it right).
    
    q
    

    Thanks, although not quite a transcript - no mention of redundancies!


    SME is small and medium enterprises, it was a wholly owned company of
    Digital set up in the UK from the Philips and Kienzle people we took on, 
    however I thought we were moving them all into Digital, and SME as a 
    company in the UK would no longer exist.

    In the Rest of Europe, SME was only Philips (I think..or was it only 
    Kienzle?)

    Small and
    Medium
    Enterprises

    A company set up to tackle small and medium enterprises without the 
    overhead of Digital.

    Heather

    re: .-1
    
    ehhh...Heather shouldn't that be DEE instead of SME?
    
    DEE is (or is it was?) Digital Equipment Enterprise. Anyhow
    that's where I got parked during the Phililps Information Systems
    transition to Digital. DEE's goal was to service the SME area
    (we all know what SME is, don't we?).
    
    Anyhow I'm not sure what sure what really happened. DEE folded into
    Digital Classic and we DEE'ers become proud and true Digitalitites :-)
    
    History in the Making Part I...
    
    re roelof

    
>    ehhh...Heather shouldn't that be DEE instead of SME?
 
	Nope, DEE never existed in the UK

	maybe DEE was Philips in Europe, and SME was Keinzle?


	Who can tell, however, rolling them into Digital proper means we will
	have to find how to do business with less overhead, or we will lose
	bigtime with small and medium enterprises.

	If I remember small to medium was up to 400 employees in the customer.

	Heather

    Heather
    
    Just to <rathole> a little bit...
    
    If SME is up to 600 employees in a company, then 90 per cent of all
    employment in UK manufacturing companies is SME.
    
    To put it another way the British Aerospace, Ford, GM, ICI, GEC type
    names only directly account for 10%.
    
    As, for the past few years, we've only targetted the big ones, is it
    any wonder that we've got a low public profile?  In manufacturing we've
    been deliberately avoiding 90% of the working population.
    
    IMAGINE HAVING 100% OF UK MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY AS OUR TARGET MARKET!

    To continue the rathole a moment....
    
    Ref -1 It doesn't work quite like that. The top 10-20% of corporations
    will account for over 80% of the revenue generated in the economy and
    also better than 80% of the dosh spent on IT. An SME type organisation
    will typically buy a computer system once every 4 or 5 years, and then
    a fairly small, lowish value one, whereas a Ford or GEC will buy many
    millions worth annually. Hence we have direct sales people focused on
    the top 150 UK companies and manage all the rest via
    channels/ditributors etc. A sales person would never make a decent
    return going for accounts in the 80% portion.
    
    HOWEVER - what we have been doing badly for the past few years is:
    
    - only selling to existing bits of the major corporates and not gaining
    market share in them 
    
    - not managing our channels effectively and giving them incentives to
    sell to new name customers.
    
    The latter is now happening but I am not so sure of the former. Having
    spent the past three years selling into 100% non Digital accounts
    (British Rail and AmEx UK) I can assure you that it is not a 3 month
    win. We are only now getting really significant revenues after the
    lengthy investment. This however, doesn't fit with the current "shift
    boxes fast" message from Corporate.
    
    (Sanctimonious Hat Off - Rat Hole closing)
    
    Paul

    Re. a few back:  SME is a market, or a market segment, whatever.
    It stands for small and medium enterprises --
    companies with annual revenues of under $100 million (US) a year.
    It represents a LOT of opportunity, not just for Digital but for all
    the technology companies. 

    Yeh,  SME has been "acknowledged" many times by Digital during the past
    10 years.  Sometimes as "Small Business", or "General Business", or
    "SME" (two years ago, with Win Hindle as Executive Partner), or
    "Business Development".  NONE of the major computer companies (like HP)
    sell directly into this space, and rely exclusively on resellers.  But
    to simply say that that is what Digital should immediately do would be
    a bogus error, since HP knows how to motivate their resellers.
    
    Digital has too many problems right now that directly impact resellers:
    product margin issues, delivery issues, support issues, etc.  The thin
    layer of coverage given to our "VARS" in the SME space (basically
    administrative sales reps who manage pricing and delivery issues for
    the resellers, but not aggressive new product "sales" to the same.
    (This is not a criticism of the individuals here; there are only a few
    assigned to the major wholesalers, and the actual VARS get little
    attention).
     
    Then we have all the direct end-user "SME" sales types buried in the
    PBU's, futilely attempting to compete with small VARS of HP's, COMPAQ,
    etc., who need the business so much more desperately in order to
    survive.  If we actually manage to convince the customer to buy DEC
    products (almost always just PC's, since our printers cannot compete
    with HP's), we historically have been unable to ship product in a
    timely fashion.  This REALLY annoys our VARS, since SME customers don't
    plan their purchases for a year out like Fortunate (maybe Unfortunate
    these days) 500 types, and typically are up against the wall to get
    things installed once they make a decision.  So the VARS say OK, then
    we'll sell the customer COMPAQ because it can ship in a week, and we'll
    keep the customer happy - and that's what counts!
    
    I guess my suggestion is that we are spinning our wheels in SME today
    with so many end-user reps trying to contact customers directly. 
    Instead, shouldn't the same reps be assigned to burying every potential
    PC lan reseller out there with information and support to resell
    Digital PC products? And should we not send these reps out there with
    more than PC catalogs, and have some creative small reseller incentive
    programs established (and I know these do not exist now)?
    
    Might this discussion be critical to Digital's future, since it is
    undoubtedly true that the "SME" market is where most of the job growth and
    innovation in business is occurring?

    re .7 ;'thank goodness for the locals'??
    Oh-you mean the ones who got us into this mess in the first place?I
    thought for a minute you were talking about top-flight,visionary,tough,
    no-nonsense,eye-for-detail,customer orientated managers who had
    implemented motivating and clear working environments,guided the ship
    with a steady hand and always came top in customer satisfaction surveys.
    
    Must have been mistaken...
    
    I wish Damiani luck.He didn't get on in IBM by being a dummy and he
    MUST know what the problems are and his first actions are to talk to his
    employees and to define a few,simple action plans which can be done
    quickly,measured quickly and used again or discarded rather than the
    old game of leaving every issue n the table and looking at all of them
    from a million different angles two million times.I mean,do you really
    want me to post the NINETEEN page SIMPLIFIED(it says so in the heading)
    guide to the 3x3 organisation?
    Gimmeabreak

 Digital - Hires another vet of IBM
	{The Boston Globe, 6-Jan-94, p. 33}
   Digital, reaching once again into the well of talent at rival IBM, has
 chosen a 30-year IBM veteran to try to revive its European operations, which
 have been profitable but sagging.  Vincenzo Damiani, a 53-year-old native of
 Italy, said one of his earliest tasks would be to review existing plans to
 eliminate 3,000 of Digital's 30,000 workers in Europe, raising the possibility
 that cuts could be deeper.  "We have to define the right size of the company,"
 said Damiani, who was named corporate VP and president of Digital's European
 operations.  "Three thousand people can be enough or it can be more than that.
 But it will be the consequence of logical right-sizing."  Digital shed 5,000
 jobs in Europe last year.  Damiani, in an interview from division headquarters
 in Geneva, said he had been working with Digital for the past month and had
 written a 10-point plan to raise revenues and cut costs.  One key goal is to
 push Digital computers into more small- and medium-sized companies.  "This is
 an area of great potential in Europe," he said.  Digital has also started a
 late effort to become a major PC seller in Europe, where it now claims a 2.5%
 share of the business PC market.

    
    ... if we only could get our veterans to our competitors .-)
    
    

    
    Re: .-1
    
    Hey, BJ is wearing blue these days.
    
    
    

Business Week (1/17/94) has an article on Damiani.  Some items of interest:

* Damiani recently "lost out to [Hans-Olaf] Henkel for IBM Europe's top job",
  but "the move to Digital could be a jump from the frying pan into the fire".
  "IBM's Henkel plans to accelerate job cuts by an additional 10,000 jobs
  over two years" [apparently IBM thought Henkel would be able to do a better
  job here].
* Digital plowed $288m into Olivetti ("So far, the payoff from the alligance
  appears remote") and DEC made an "ill timed stab at the SME sector"
  when it bought Mannesman and Philips.  [Interestingly, DEC is suddenly
  gung-ho on SME and one of Damiani's 10 point plan was for more strategic
  alliances.]
* "In France, fewer than 10% of Digital employees are in sales, less than a
  third of the market average.  Sales per European employee are 40% under
  the $500k industry benchmark".  [bon voyage]
* "Fixing DEC's horrible marketing management and boosting its stagnant
  6% market share will be Damiani's job No.1, says Ed Lucente"

     Bullet item 1 from the previous reply, brings home one of the biggest
    concerns I have with many of the ex-IBMers being hired into DEC. THese
    people in some cases are being invited to leave our competitors for a
    reason. Yet we are hiring them like they are gods...
    
    q
    

    Well, we aren't the only ones who do that.  As one example, do you not
    recall who was (until recently) the top man at Computervision, and
    where he'd previously worked?
    
    Dick

    did we add 'pension funding for exIBM'ers' to our business charter last
    shareholders meeting? ,-)

No It's their (IBM) way of gettin rid of DEC. First get rid of their
(IBM) managers and then employ them in DEC

Ciao,

Michiel