Conference 7.286::digital

    Simon,
    
    You sure aren't kidding about the HOURS!  Between you, Joe O. and
    Jackie, I've spent more time on the phone with you folks than the local
    people here, the software Access Center, or anywhere else!  And had a
    whole lot better luck.  You collectively solved a LOT of the problems
    and kept us going...  I'll miss the ability to make use of this
    resource for those 1000 and 1 random, internal problems we get
    confronted with that we just don't have all the answers to!  God help
    me if I ever have to be the equivalent of another
    DECWINDOWS/workstation pioneer!  Or RALLY without a customer to nail!

Gosh! I thought topic 1024 in this conference, entitled "Information
Sharing - For Fun & Profit",  was all in jest. Never would I have expected
it to come true. How naive I am.

    I'm sorry but this was bound to happen when "everyone" has to show a profit
    in their operations.  I am amazed that it didn't happen sooner given the
    current feeding frenzy that is going on in this company.  The reason that
    you can survive as an organization is that you bring in dollars.  If no
    dollars, then you are overhead and have no job because overhead is not a
    necessary function.  (Do I need a smiley face here or can everyone see the
    sarcism?)

    While I will agree that there is a reason to show a business need for every
    job, I think that we (DEC) have taken this to the extreme.  Isn't there a
    better way to figure out what is necessary and what isn't?  The only REAL
    dollars are those that we get from the customer and the ones that we pay
    out to the world.  ALL the rest is funny money!  It would be nice if we
    could again focus on the value(s) we provide to the customer and not on the
    amount of money we can get from our fellow employee.

    'nuff said,
    Lee G.

I have to disagree with the sentiment in .-1...  

I have seen plenty of 'support' groups out there that do absolutly nothing
of value.  Perhaps forcing support groups to justify there existance by
bringing in revenue from someplace, either internal or external, is justified.

I for one use the CSC all the time and a $100/call charge is not going to 
deter me from using them in the future because they help me get things done
for our customers in a timely and quality way.  When they cease to do that,
I'll stop calling.  And if they cease to do it for enough people, then perhaps 
they ought to go away or get fixed.

On the other hand, working in the DCC, the same requirement has been forced
on our group.   I have never has a sales rep tell me he couldn't use me just
because we started cross charging.  If and when this happens, then perhaps
he didn't really need me in the first place.  I also believe this will help to 
bring the cost of sales in line with reality.  Far too often I see massive 
amounts of resurces tied up due to lack of proper planning and a tendency to 
send out "emergency" broadcasts for help.  Perhaps cross charging coupled with
better tracking on return on investment will force better planning and more
efficient use of support resources.

/mlm (who has been "charging" for months now and has more business than 
      ever...)

$100 of what?  cross-charge funny-money?  Hmmph, every time someone cross-
charges funny-money, more than a few *real* dollars disappear into
the vast bureaucracy to pay for the paperwork.

Martin.

ps: please cross-charge $0.79 to my cost-center if you read this message.

    As Martin says, the administrative costs of such cross charges make the
    idea of a $100/call charge ludicrous. I can only assume that this is
    once again a political game to seek extra funding.
    
    This is good for DEC?
    
    	- andy

    re .5
    
    I agree that some support groups do little. However, unless you are
    the cost center manager that's going to incur those $100 per call
    charges I wouldn't be too quick to sign up. Be prepared, as those
    charges begin to appear on the cost center reports to start
    "justifying" every time you call the CSC. This is yet another example
    of administrative paralysis that is and will cause much pain within
    Digital.
    
    -Terry

>    
>    I agree that some support groups do little. However, unless you are
>    the cost center manager that's going to incur those $100 per call
>    charges I wouldn't be too quick to sign up. Be prepared, as those
>    charges begin to appear on the cost center reports to start
>    "justifying" every time you call the CSC. This is yet another example
>    of administrative paralysis that is and will cause much pain within
>    Digital.

I can't imagine calling the CSC if I couldn't come up with a paragraphs worth 
of justification.  I also can't imagine a manager who would call me to task
for using the CSC for legitimate business purposes...

I usually call when I am

  1) in a time critical situation working an issue or subject with which I
     am not very familiar

  2) have spent some time beating my head against a problem without success...

I have always worked in support functions (engineering and in the field) and 
have pretty much been cross charging for most of that time.  I never felt like
it was bad for DEC, in fact, I honestly think the accountability and 
measurements that are provided help insure that resources are used efficiently.

Most cross charges are simply cost center JV's.   How expensive can that be
compared with the alternative of simply having a bunch of support groups of 
perhaps marginal usefulness and no real way of detecting it.

I guess the issue as I see it is this:

Groups that are not directly involved in selling or producing product are 
"support".  This is includes everything from finance to sales support to
personnel to the cooks in the cafeteria.  If these groups are not involved
in helping revenue producing groups to succeed, then perhaps they ought not
to exist. 

To me cross charging is a way of making some kind of sense of a very complicated
mess.  If we assume that internal 'funny money' can be traced back to the 
real stuff, then groups that do something will survive in a kind of internal
free market and those that don't will die.  I don't see why the administrative
overhead has to be that complicated.

Am I making sense here??  This all seems very clear to me, but obviously 
others don't see it that way...

/mike

    re: .9
    
    I think you are forgetting one little thing...a budget, or in some
    cases the lack of.
    
    I can just see it now.  On April 15, everyone in my group gets a memo
    from our CC mgr, stating that we can't call the CSC anymore this fiscal
    year because we are over our budget for CSC calls.
    
    On April 16, I have trouble with a layered product that is needed for a
    customer demo.  I can't call the CSC, I can't fix it, the demo is the
    next day, so my question in the appropriate NOTES conference may or may
    not get answered in time.  What do I do?  Get the sales rep to ask the
    customer for his access info?  He probably doesn't have support for the
    product, otherwise, why would we be demoing it?  What if the customer
    is only a prospective customer, and thus has no support contract?  Does
    the sales rep cancel the visit because the potential customer isn't a
    customer? Yep, Digital is going to look REAL good on this one:-(
    
    Bob

As a former manager of 6 Cost Centers, I can tell you that the cross-charging 
that went on between internal cost centers was and is RIDICULOUS!

You may think that the cross-charging is used to determine the value and 
contributions of a particular organization... well that's total bullshit.
And its worse than you may think... My organization provided data center
support and computer services to other internal groups. I had to justify my
cost center(s) budget to cover the cost of providing those services. My
customers' budget(s) also had to justify the cost of the services I was
providing. So, in essence, we both justified the budget for the same expense.
I asked the value of this many times and got a shrug of the shoulders and a
"that's the way its done" response from my management and financial people. 

Needless to say, I'm through being a manager.  Back then I frequently
questioned my value. I know my value to the corporation now!

Regards,

Jim
Sales Support Consultant

Re: .10: Call the Product Manager and ask for help.

re: .10
    
>    I can just see it now.  On April 15, everyone in my group gets a memo
>    from our CC mgr, stating that we can't call the CSC anymore this fiscal
>    year because we are over our budget for CSC calls.
    
Wouldn't your CC mgr. have to be a total dodo-brain with suicidal tendencies
to do this?  What good does it do you to "make" a budget line item but "blow"
your overall budgetary goals as a result?

re: .11

Agreed that the multiple justifications are a bunch of horse manure, but how
would you suggest that internal support and admin groups "prove" their worth
(in a way that somebody can objectively measure)?
								paul

>As a former manager of 6 Cost Centers, I can tell you that the cross-charging 
>that went on between internal cost centers was and is RIDICULOUS!

Not knowing the situation, I cannot comment...

>You may think that the cross-charging is used to determine the value and 
>contributions of a particular organization... well that's total bullshit.

Fine, so its bullshit...

Help me out...  Just how do you tell whether or not an organization is 
contributing anything or not.  I can't think of anything simpler or more
to the point.  Properly implemeted there shouldn't be that much of an
administrative overhead.

Perhaps some of the other systems I've seen where groups try to quantify how
much business they have 'leveraged' is a better one.  My experience is that
the numbers that get generated have absolutely no touch with reality and you
can't really blame the folks generating the numbers, they're trying to 
estimate some magic number based on fuzzy data at best.  Shoot, if you add up 
all the dollars that all internal support groups say they 'leveraged' I bet 
we're 5 times bigger than IBM!  (pure speculation...)

The arguments about budgets constraining access sound like piss-poor management
to me.  Perhaps there ought to me some corporate 'loan pool' so that people
who have cash-flow problems or something can continue to provide essential
services, but if a group is continuously running in the red, then perhaps there
is a problem that ought to be examined.  In the case of sales support, don't 
they work for sales?  In which case they have as big a budget as they can 
generate sales for.  Why would they ever run out of budget unless they
were using more resources than could be justified for the volume of sales?
No sales yet?  Sometimes you got to make investments but dammit some of those
investments better pay off or what are we doing?

Keep in mind, my opinions are formed from my own, admittedly, rather narrow
personal experience, so I don't know how screwed up things have got around
this subject in the rest of the corporation, but I don't think there is
a fundemental reason it ought to be screwed up and in my experience, it has 
worked resonably well.

My formula would be to have each and every group have to adopt a profit/loss
kind of accounting.  Sales would be goaled to make a profit and everybody
else would be goaled to break even (and perhaps overall growth).  Profit is
equally as bad as loss for a support group because it means you are gouging.  I
contend that this is the only way to bring sanity to a company of this size and
to insure that we are making money.  I also contend it will encourage internal
entrenpeneurship and spur creativity in terms of making the most of what we've
got.  

(editorial comment...  my opinions are still forming, but it will take a good 
argument to make me think this is not a good idea :-) )

I do not accept that budget concerns will prevent us from delivering quality
sales support or otherwise prevent us from doing whats right by the customer.
If this is the case, I suggest that there are other problems that need to be
addressed.

Well since I helped start this "fire", let me offer a suggestion for a
more sane way of handling it.  Since CSC (only as an example) keeps a
log of the number/types of calls it gets, can't the justification be
done on the volume?  OR is the real purpose to reduce the volume?

It would seem to me that no one calls for help just for the fun of it.
So the second reason would make poor business sense.  A quick (calls * $10)0
would give the value of the service being provided by the group.  Thus
the only thing that cross charging does is add administrative cost to
both the group doing the charging and to the group(s) being charged.  Is
this a way to cut costs???  I think not!

Lee G.

	Sadly, .10's got it about right. My former field cost
	center took away our single E-net account ( 1 VMS account for
	6-8 engineers ) because the cost center was billed
	$150/month for its use.

	As there is little chance that field training budgets are
	being ramped up to compensate for this new, restricted
	access to support centers, the poor field reps are 
	going to have to start dancing harder than ever....

	Nothing's wrong with tracking access, watching for abuses,
	etc., but the information's there, already, in our CSC 
	databases:  Who called, the date, the product(s) involved,
	what was said, the resolution, etc.

	Steve H

	P.S.  This also adds more to the real costs of license 
	    management for Digital.  Now, if a customer or Digital
	    site needs a temporary license, then Digital has to pay 
	    admin overhead to transfer $100 so that someone can read 
	    the license sheet to the customer or rep.  What a bargain.....

    
    Maybe one issue is getting begged here.  Is the charge for the call,
    or for getting a useful response to a call?
    
    CSC's are wonderful, and have some very dedicated people, but there are
    times when they have just been unable to answer the question.  If I
    have no guarantee that I'll get a response, but have to pay regardless,
    well...
    
    	Dave

I can remember in the early 80's when the announcement was made in PDP-10 SWE
that "all employees are now entitled to file SPRs without their cost center
first having to purchase support contracts".  (This predated any hot line
service that could help me in my work; I could get advice by walking down the
hall).  Whether this applied to all Digital products, or just my own product
line's, is unclear history to me.

What this meant to me was the assurance that crucial problems I discovered could
be properly logged, tracked, and eventually fixed.  This is distinguished from
a state of affairs where problems could be ignored at the whim of individuals,
because I didn't have the right to log them into a tracking system.

I doubt I've filed more than 3 SPRs since then.  (And I've never called a
hot-line).  I don't think of myself as a burden on the system.


Now I seem to recall hearing rumors that "paper SPRs will go away".  If this
were true, then until or unless someone tells me how to use yet another medium
(like a free dial-up SPR logging service), then I've lost a right to improve the
quality of Digital's products which I thought I had over the better part of a
decade.

This is not a step forward.  It flies in the face of the perception of people
spanning the ranks from individual contributor to VP that "Digital has a
quality problem".


However, I can imagine one reason for the return of cross-charging: What if the
CSCs have been unable to effectively deliver support services to their customers
with serious problems because of a flood of calls for trivial problems?  There
are certainly a lot of employees too poorly trained or lazy to RTFM.  Does this
seem plausible to anyone else?
				/AHM
P. S.  Implicit in the above are my beliefs that:

1.  One of the reasons why Digital has a quality problem is that product
problems are seldom unified for systematic tracking: CLD, SPR, QAR, Notes, mail,
telephone conversations; few know the magnitude of anyone's problem backlogs
because most groups have no idea how many open problems other people think they
are holding).

2.  Entering problem reports in unofficial databases that can be arbitrarily
ignored, such as Notes files and QAR systems, can be so counterproductive that
it is debatable as to whether to take them seriously.

    re: .18
    
    I don't know whether the CSCs have too many trivial problems or not,
    but one phrase I heard when I was at the Colorado Springs CSC was
    "1 800 do my job".  I don't have any problem with us doing a customer's
    job, provided we charge them appropriately.  But if people in the CSC
    are doing a job that a DEC employee is being paid to do, I have a
    problem with that.
        John Sauter

	I've been at the Colorado CSC for 3 years now, and,
	in my experience, "RTFM" problems are rare.  Usually,
	when I'm talking to someone in Digital, something is
	BROKEN, or the documentation is inadequate, or
	the techniques required to use the product are not
	obvious...

	Paper SPRs are supposed to be "gone".  Even the
	occasional one we get from a customer is sent to
	a specialist to be researched and entered into
	the call-tracking system.  So, yep, it looks like
	the official "bug report" is gonna cost some poor
	cost-center manager $100-a-pop if his employee calls
	it in.

	Anybody care to guess how long the managers in the
	field, pinched down to the fractional dollar, are
	going to wait to instruct their people:

	"Don't report that, it'll cost me $100 !  Let the
	 engineering groups find the bugs !"

	Sigh....

	Steve H

    
    re .13, .14: How would an internal organization prove it's value,
    except by cross-charging?
    
    How about asking the recipients of the organizations's services for
    an objective evaluation? As pointed out in another reply, $100/call
    doesn not address the truly important mesaurement, which is the value
    of the response. If you want to gauge the value added by the CSC
    organization, ask the people who rely on it.
    
    And this is not to single out CSC -- the technique can be applied
    universally without a cross-charging bureaucracy. (Want to know the value
    of a manager? Ask the people being managed. The value of an engineering
    group? Ask the people who use the products?)
    
    This approach also provide a lot more useful feedback than "They're not
    calling, and we don't know why."
    

re: .20:
	I've been at the Colorado CSC for 3 years now, and,
	in my experience, "RTFM" problems are rare.  Usually,
	when I'm talking to someone in Digital, something is
	BROKEN, or the documentation is inadequate, or
	the techniques required to use the product are not
	obvious...

In 1976-1978, I had final responsiblity for RSTS/E software support.
At this time, "Hoss" received about 3,000 phone calls/month while the
USA field received about 6,000.  Yup, 50% of the customer calls resulted
in a call to Maynard.

About 1/3 of the calls were for things in the manuals, 1/3 for bugs that
we already knew about; and most of the rest could be answered "I don't
know, try it and see what happens."

The other calls are what paid the bills: the software specialist in
Australia who came in at 3:00 am so he could call during Maynard business
hours, the person who called on Tuesday with a trivial question -- but
had been hired on Monday as an RT11 specialist and was "the only person
in the office in the entire district."

My take was that RTFM problems mean one of two things:

1. the manual didn't address the reader's needs (it left something out,
   or had so much text that the information disappeared).
2. the person calling was so rushed to get an answer to the customer
   that a phone call was faster than a manual search (see 1. above).

Perhaps a half-dozen people misused the phone; the rest were running
as fast as they could just to keep in the same place.

I can see two solutions to the support problem:

1. Build systems that don't need support (i.e. they work, are easy to
   use, and do what the customer needs).
2. Charge so much for support that the customer is forced to solve the
   problem locally -- at least until the next release comes along.

Option 2 is the best solution (it makes the most money for the company;
or at least the support center) -- at least until a competitor tries
option 1.

Martin.

    My problem with all of this is that all of these "internal" groups are
    arbitrarily setting their own rates.
    
    One time, I use the DCC and it's $85 per hour for any level person.
    Another group up in Mass. charges over $100 per hour (again for any
    level person). 
    
    Why can't there be a standard cost per person to manage to? Then if
    you need to utilize the services of a Specialist 4 (or whatever) it
    will be X dollars, a Consultant 1 would be Y dollars per hour.
    
    I know that the CSC is somewhat different than "sub-contracting" to an
    internal group, but they still can track calls by hour and Specialist
    responding.
    
    A by-product of this might be that if a manager says that he/she can't
    "pay" for the cost center because costs are too high (or there are too
    few workers),then they'd DO something about it themselves! It would
    actually force managers into managing - novel idea huh?
    
    Phil
    (who has been both a Unit Manager and in an internal "support" group as
    well as in the CSC)

    re: the problem with using numbers (i.e., $100/call) to replace
    appropriate feedback in measuring effectiveness.
    
    A company I used to work for owned a very large newspaper.  The
    circulation of the paper was very large, so the circulation area was
    broken into geographical regions, each with someone charged with
    insuring increasing circulation and customer satisfaction.
    
    One region had severe problems with cust. sat.  The regional circulation
    director decided to manipulate the metric of the problem (i.e., number of
    dissatisfied callers per month) rather than increasing the quality of
    the circulation effort (e.g., more papers delivered on-time).  The
    director had the number of incoming phone lines CUT IN HALF to reduce
    the overall volume of calls (the lines were constantly busy; faced with
    constant busy signals, many customers would simply stop trying to call
    with complaints).  The volume of calls did drop dramatically, but after a
    while, so did the circulation of the paper in the region!
    
    This $100 per call business smacks of measuring the easy number rather
    than getting the REAL feedback.  The earlier reference to a "DM/UM cuts
    off all calls to CSC at yearend because of budget" scenario becomes
    very possible for districts which are close to budget at year end.
    Even if it doesn't get handled that way, the cost consciousness of
    these times will encourage specialists to find any bass-ackward way
    around a problem, when a short call to a CSC might provide a quick a
    painless solution.
    
    A side note: last I knew, software patches and known bugs were often
    made available to EIS PSS people ONLY through the CSC.  Now that it
    costs $100 a crack to find out if a problem can be attributed to a
    known bug in a product, I hope someone will devise a way of publishing
    known bugs for EIS PSS folks.  It may be as simple as allowing folks
    access to STARS, but right now this is the exception rather than the
    rule for Software Specs.
    
    -- Russ

    Call! $100.00 plus
    Call-back! $100.00 plus
    Referral! $100.00 plus
    Wait time! $100.00 plus
    Phone tag! $100.00.
    
    Of all the charge backs and phone calls, waiting for replies, promises
    and the general consumption of resources to get something done will
    out weigh the value the opportunity.
    
    thats just my  $0.02 worth.
    

    The problem is that the CSC is very close to becoming the FSC (Free
    Service Center).  In my space (PDP-11 software) over 65% of all calls
    last year were from people who did not have SPS contracts.  I was
    also told that for FY89 over 72,000 cases of contract discrepancies
    were documented.
    
    I don't see that the CSC has any choice but to charge a pittance, and
    it is that.  100 bucks is really pretty cheap given our present cost
    structure.
    
    Properly handled, J.V.s should not be a problem.  Years ago, a J.V.
    cost the corporation $62.00 to process.....but the way you get around
    that is to accumulate charges and bill out on a monthly or quarterly
    basis.

	re: -.1

	Billing Digital cost centers to try to balance
	contract discrepancies at CSCs reminds me of the
	scene in the movie "10", when the aging housekeeper
	involunatrily emits a rude noise, and the dog
	bolts from the room.
	The priest turns apologetically to Dudley Moore and
	explains, " Whenever Mrs. Jacobs breaks wind, we beat the
	dog."

	We used to have calls here at the CSC flagged "Non-contact",
	indicating that the person calling wasn't on the official
	list of contacts for a certain customer permitted to call
	the CSC.

	The "non-contacts" HAD to be passed through without argument,
	as Digital's databases depend on thousands of people keying
	this stuff in by hand, while maintaining complex contracts
	consisting of ever-changing hardware and software maintenance
	agreements.

	Telling a customer "Sorry, you're not on the list...." 
	could produce an explosion like Krakatoa:  "What ?! I told
	the local office 3 months ago that John, Susan, and myself were
	the contacts!"

	I would suggest that our databases are easily 6-9 months
	out of date due to Digital's ponderous administrative
	systems.

	Can't blame the customer for that....and ought not blame the
	poor cost center manager for it, either.


	Steve H

In theory, cross-charging provides some measure of the true value of a
service and prevents individuals or groups from monopolizing or overusing
scarce corporate resources. In practice, cross-charging serves to reduce
demand for a service. The issue then becomes whether reducing the demand
is a good idea. It probably is in some instances, but I doubt that it
is in this case.

Consider a hypothetical university that offered courses where you paid
extra tuition each time you asked a question in class or visited the
professor's office. I suspect that very few students would ask questions
or visit professors. Would that make for a better or worse learning
environment? (You supply the answer.)  

One thing that it probably would do is cause the university to cut the 
number of professors and increase their class sizes: after all, with fewer 
questions in class, there's time to cover more material in fewer course
offerings; and with fewer students stopping by for help and advice,
professors have time to grade more papers and exams.   Which may be
the general idea behind the policy mentioned in .0 anyway...

Follow-up to my .11 on internal cross-charging:

In my 12 years of providing internal data center and technical services 
(mostly in a management capacity), I saw no evidence of any organization's 
value (especially ours) being determined by what we cross-charged...

Make no mistake about it: THERE ARE SIGNIFICANT RESOURCES BEING EXPENDED EACH 
AND EVERY MONTH TO ENSURE THAT INTERNAL DOLLARS GET JOURNAL VOUCHERED BETWEEN 
COST CENTERS. We were even cross-charging our own group's cost centers to make
sure money was in the right buckets to keep the Finance folks happy.

Here is how it could work:

In the late Fall/Early Winter when budgets are submitted (at least in the
groups I worked in) you go out and meet with your customers and ask them what 
they want to sign up for. Now most of these customers are end-users that are 
doing something more closely associated with revenue-generation than the 
internal support groups I worked for, so dtermining the business need should 
be fairly straightforward. You discuss the services they need, draw 
up a contract, and then submit that with your budget request. The contract 
should include dollar amounts and everything; and the key is the commitment
from the customer that they need those services. You can even have someone
high up such as the customer's Group Controller or First-line VP sign off on
it. 

This strategy prevents the cost center managers and admin support people from
doing all the monthly admin work of determining how much to charge and then 
submitting the JV's and then ensuring the JV's got submitted correctly and if 
not, finding out why and then adjusting the next month's JV's.

There are ways of determining the worth of an organization without all the red 
tape and administrative hassle. Unfortunately our internal support 
infrastructure is so programmed to doing it the way its always been done, that 
its going to take an act of Ken to get any significant changes made.


Regards,

Jim "Down with Bureaucracy" Mickol

    Now that there have been a few responses...
    
    First, remember that the info we got was that the CC will ony be
    charged for a call to CSC where we don't have an SPS contract number... 
    I don't know how this relates to the situation where you call, wait for
    a return call, miss the return call, have the call closed, call back
    and start the loop all over.  
    
    re .10:
    
    As far as contacting the product manager - my project manager has been
    attempting to contact the product manager of the product we are using
    every day for the past 2-3 weeks.  She has repeatedly gotten recordings
    and left messages.  She has occassionally reached someone with a pulse
    that insists that the product manager will be calling back...  has
    never happened...
    
    Clearly this is NOT a viable support channel.

    Raise a CLD, call CSSE. We don't charge and we do respond.
    
    	- andy

    I think a CLD can be raised only in the name of a customer.  If you
    have a customer's name you can use the CSC's services without being
    charged the $100, according to this topic.
    
    What I fear is that internal groups who don't want to pay the $100 will
    start trying to get support without going through the CSC.  They will
    contact CSSE or Engineering first, either directly or through a
    notes conference.  Because I'm in Engineering I'd rather that all
    problems go through the CSC first, since frequently the specialist can
    solve problems quickly without taking up my time.
    
    I don't think it's practical for Engineering to try to set up a
    cross-charge system for solving problems.  Perhaps we'll just have to
    be more hard-nosed about sending people with problems to the CSC.
    But how do you deal with an internal user who isn't "allowed" to call
    the CSC because his cost center manager refuses to pay the price?
    What's the "right thing" in such a case?
        John Sauter

    People call the CSC because they have a problem with a product right?
    Why not bill the group responsible for the product - the development
    group!

    OK, I'm not completely serious. You can't blame the development group
    for someone not wanting to read a manual. But it seems as though we
    could make development groups a little more responsible for making
    products that work and are easy to use and documentation that is easy 
    to understand and complete.

    			Alfred

    
    Most of the sales support people I know who call CSC do so only after
    having exhausted all other sources of information.  It's usually over
    an issue that is important to a customer.
    
    What I can foresee in this time of belt-tightening is an edict coming
    down from local field management that we can save costs by ceasing all
    calls to CSC.  Of course, the customers suffer from this, because they
    many not get a timely answer to their question- even if the question
    involves a well-known (within CSC) bug in a Digital product.  So 
    customer satisfaction suffers, and hence DEC sales suffer.
    
    Meanwhile the folks at CSC who helped the field don't have so much to
    do, so the CSC organization is allowed to be trimmed back.
    
    Maybe the real situation is that in times of narrowing margins we can
    simply no longer afford to support an internal CSC organization, and
    this is the way to make that clear?  Of course, it will be necessary
    that the field become that much more expert.  Kind of a sad and cynical
    point of view- tell me I'm wrong!
    
    	Dave

    re: .33
    
    The specialists at the CSC record their work on a per-product basis.
    Perhaps their expenses on behalf of a product should be charged against
    that product's revenue, as should the cost to develop a educational
    course for that product, for example.  If a product isn't making money
    either fix it or discontinue it.
    
    An attitude like that will motivate Engineering appropriately.
    
    Yes, you _can_ blame the development group for someone not wanting to
    read a manual.  The manuals should be written in such a way that people
    _want_ to read them.
        John Sauter

re: .27, .28 ...

Maybe we could turn this whole JV thing inside out and become like
the two businessmen marooned on a desert island who became rich
selling coconuts to each other.

About a year ago, someone in personnel remarked that we shouldn't
badmouth companies in non-business notesfiles (like HOMEWORK) because
"either they're our customers and we should be nice to them or they
aren't our customers and we should be nice to them so we can sell to
them."  Maybe CSC management needs to hear that lecture.

Perhaps, if a "non-paying" customer contacts the CSC, it could be
flagged by the army of bureaucrats as a sales opportunity and someone
asked to do a follow-up call.  On the basis of my six years experience
in field and corporate software support, I'm certain we can make more
money by giving away a moderate amount of "support" and thereby paving
the way for future large sales than by nickel-and-dimeing every last
drop of blood out of the poor struggling customer.

Oh yes, there probably will be a few people who misuse this, but I suspect
that eliminating the overhead of just one gatekeeper-bureaucrat will
pay for their support several times over.

Martin.

   It is truly amazing the gymnastics we perform to "complexicate" our
   situation.  Whatever happened to the direct approach?


   							Terza

   P.S.-Even this discussion has become so tangled that I, for one, have
   lost track of the problem(s) that we were trying to address.  

    Re - a couple.  But we do!  When a non-contract customer is serviced
    by the CSC, a Contract Discrepancy Report IS sent to the local office.
    They are supposed to follow-up on the "opportunity".  Guess how many
    sales folk do that.....not many.  That is part of the problem.
    
    I think the CSC should absolutely refuse to service customers who do
    not have contracts!  This is silly.  The last time I went to my auto
    dealer for service I believe I had to pay.  I would have loved to have
    the repairs done for free, and have them send a report to me
    encouraging me to get a contract.
    
    BTW, there's a guy named Olsen who strongly agrees with me.  Think he's
    been making a real point lately about getting paid for our services.

re: .41
  
  <<  I think the CSC should absolutely refuse to service customers who do
  <<  not have contracts!  This is silly.  The last time I went to my auto
  <<  dealer for service I believe I had to pay. 

That's a great theory, but the fact is Digital doesn't KNOW who has a contract
and who doesn't!  It's fairly easy for the auto dealer to identify the owner of
the car and determine whether or not you have a service contract [unless, of
course, you son dents the fender and wants to get it fixed fast before you
find out about it ...8-)...], but it's much more complex with the way businesses
are organized to know who's "authorized" to call CSC.

I attended a presentation by CSC management a few months back and we were told
that they're trying to get to a point where OUR records are accurate and 
up-to-date, but until that time, they believe it's in Digital's best interest
to err on the the side of providing service to the customer, then tracking why
there's no record of a contract. I recall that the message was that cases of
"I don't have a contract but can you please solve my problem" are rare. The much
more common occurrence is "No, I don't know what our authorization number is,
and the regular manager is on vacation, but the system's not working and we
need to know what to do!"  All in all, I tend to agree with the current CSC
policy.

	/Marvin

    Re -1.....you're absolutely right....our admin systems suck, and are
    getting worse.  I don't know what got into me; I actually thought we
    knew how to use computers.
    
    Maybe we could bring L.L. Bean in to run our services organization.

Back to the topic of $100.00 per internal call....

It maybe that I'm over simplifying this but either the CSC's need to 
justify itself, or the CSC's are being abused (1 800 DO MY JOB).

I don't see why $100.00 would justify anything, if CSC's provide a service
internally, that should be enough.  I am sure CSC's now maintain records of
number of calls, turn-around time, etc.  Seems to me that that sort of info
would justify or not, support.

If the CSC's are being abused, why punish everybody (by charging $100.00),
including the customer, since it may take longer to get SOLUTIONS to them.
Instead of charging, maybe CSC's could provide reports to managers, indicating
Joe Specialist made half of your unit's/districts/what-ever calls last quarter.
Maybe Joe need additional help....  maybe Joe is in over his head...

Sounds like all the CSC did was create another metric.

	... and no one has QUOTED from a memo, directive, policy, have they?
Simon Maufe sounds like he's closer to the facts than anybody! :>)

	Just to add to the fray, I "heard" some months ago that the CSC's
would start requiring EIS DM's to buy "contracts" for their third-party,
non-badged, service delivery resources.  I forget the details, something
about 10 products for $100 a month per person, I think.  Never saw any paper
on it, though, and I thought it made perfect sense at the time!

One of the things that we have been told to do is to use the Digital NOTES
conferences as a way to resolve problems, rather than call the CSC.  While I 
have nothing against this and most always get rapid, accurate reponses from 
NOTES conferences I always thought that it was "corporate policy" that the
information in the NOTES conferences IS NOT to be used as an official
support vehicle/statement from Digital.

I have asked one of the managers to try and get clarification on this.  To me
the CSC's "charter" is to provide support services; this is not the charter of
the EasyNET notes conferences

    re: .48
    
    What's to clarify?  NOTES is not 'official'.  Does anyone really care? 
    How many hundreds and thousands of support calls are avoided each week
    because NOTES are available? Charter schmarter; if it looks like a
    duck and quacks like a duck, it sure as hell isn't a dog!
    
    When I was a specialist (and maybe I'm playing old tapes), my lasting
    impression of the CSC's were that they were a good mechanism for the
    escalation of critical calls, but for everyday, not time-critical stuff
    I got sick of calling and getting someone who I had to explain the
    features of the product to first before I could get a questioon
    answered.  It usually took several calls and several days before I
    finally got someone who knew as much about the product as I did. Once I
    discovered NOTES, I discovered that a)almost nothing is new and that very
    often simple research in a conference would reveal an existing solution
    to my problem without wasting anyones time but my own or that b)it took
    no longer to get valuable help through NOTES than through oficial
    channels.
    
    I've been told (by my boss and my bosses boss and my bosses bosses
    boss...) for most of my career at DEC that the most important thing we
    do is build a personal network.  I have yet to see convincing evidence
    that this is either wrong or is not the most efficient (as defined by
    me, the 'customer') way to get things done.
    
    I'm not trying to be provocative - it just seems obvious to me that no
    matter what anyone says about "corporate policy" regarding the use of
    NOTEs as an official support vehicle, it flies in the face of logic to
    deny that it is a significant, if not the most significant, internal 
    product support vehicle.
    
    Al
    

    	Let me start off by reminding everyone that the title of my
    	organization is the CUSTOMER Support Center.  Every hour we
    	spend supporting an internal DECcie is an hour denied to
    	REVENUE-GENERATING customers.  Time denied to customers is
    	then projected into customer (dis)satisfaction.  Customer
    	revenue is the lifeblood of this organization (of this company
    	for that matter.)  Increased customer satisfaction translates
    	into loyal customers (at the very least), and also into larger
    	support contracts.

    	Now, it is very likely that a DECcie is onsite at a customer.
    	That customer may have an access number and a support contract 
    	for the particular product.  The issue is moot -- the DECcie
    	simply uses the customer's access.

    	But the customer may NOT have such a support contract.  Wouldn't
    	it be safe to assume though, that the DECcie's organization is being
    	paid by the customer for support or development?  Wouldn't it be
    	fair, then, that the Customer Support Center share in that revenue
    	in return for helping the onsite DECcie complete the project?

    	How about sales support?  Well, that is revenue generating too,
    	and it is again only fair that the Customer Support Center share
    	in those revenues if they also assisted sales support in their
    	functions.

    	So what if the DECcie is from some internal non-revenue-generating
    	group?  Don't they at least have SOME value to the company?  So
    	shouldn't the CSC share some of that value?  If there is no value
    	to share, perhaps the group should be transitioned...

    	Bottom line is that all the internal calls take away from CUSTOMER
    	calls.  (I'd say that somewhere between 10-25% of our daily call
    	volume is from internal calls.  15% of my calls are internal.)  
    	Let these internal calls also contribute to the CSC revenues so 
    	that we can increase headcount and support customers and internals 
    	alike with the level of service necessary to maintain customer 
    	satisfaction.

.15>  It would seem to me that no one calls for help just for the fun of it.

    	I have to disagree with alot of the entries that talk about
    	the legitimacy of the calls to the CSC placed by DECcies.
    	My own personal experience tells me that a MAJORITY of the
    	internal calls I handle (I support DBMS and RALLY primarily)
    	are from people who "haven't taken the course yet," or who
    	don't have a manual, or who didn't bother to check available 
    	sources like notesfiles, or who want us to design their
    	applications or debug their program.  I have had DECcies be
    	so bold as to send me their source code by VAX mail !!without
    	having even called me first!!!  They just got my name from ELF
    	or the notesfiles.  We are not a training source.  We are not 
    	a document reading service.  We are not a software development
    	service.  

    	Customers do the same thing, but at least they are paying for it.
    	If internal folks are willing to pay too, then they are welcome
    	to place avoidable calls.

    	Joe Oppelt
    
    	PS -- I did not intend to single out any one noter or DECcie 
    	with the above.  You know who you are.  Dave -- you are not
    	one of them!

    This move is most probably a knee-jerk reaction to the "All groups
    must be Profitable!" edict, and it is simply a way for the CSC to
    show a profit on paper, even though it raises the overall cost to
    Digital in the long run.  This is certainly not the first case of
    "self-cannibalism" in the company, and it won't be the last.
    
    The first result will be that CSC revenues will shoot 'way up for
    a time, as people who don't know about the new policy will continue
    to call the CSC for help.
    
    The second result is that lots of Field CCmgrs will blow their stacks
    when they get the eventual bill.  These managers will immediately tell
    their people to quit calling the CSC altogether, or at least without
    a manager's prior approval.  This may be a short-sighted attitude, but
    it's *real*, because the budget is all that counts in most places ...
    
    The third result is that specialists caught in the middle will struggle
    along for awhile, but eventually give in to the idea that our internal
    support system is totally blown, and it's time to look for some "backdoor" 
    method of getting the job done.  Some will just quit trying ...
    
    The fourth result is that the field will narrow down the list of
    products that they will support, and non-mainstream products will
    get short shrift from both Sales and EIS.  I can't count the number
    of times I've heard PSS people tell Sales Reps not to sell some
    package because no one can support it, and it will be a nightmare
    to all involved in the account.  I could list products, but I won't ...
    
    The final result is that customer satisfaction will suffer, and no
    one will be able to point to a single factor that caused the problem.
    
    It may be that we in the field have to "make do" with less resources
    to get the job done.  These are hard times for the company, and we all
    have to make adjustments.  But the idea is to cut resources and cut
    expenses at the same time.  This cross-charging nonsense does not
    generate a single additional *real* dollar for the company, and it will
    cost us a bundle to track.  

    re .50
    
    For what it's worth, I used to (note, in the past, before this new
    policy) use my customers access number, but I was told I should use my
    badge number instead.  Actually, it made sense, we have internal
    classes, which I assume provide more/better info, why not expect
    more/better info from CSC for internal calls.
    
    Also, it is my understanding, from former CSC support people, that the
    internal support and external support groups are separate.  So, in the
    short term at least, I don't understand how internal calls would
    detract from external calls.
    
    Now, if the need is to increase the support to our external customers,
    then charging internal customer is a good idea, because I believe the
    work load for internal support will decrease.  Therefore, former
    internal support personnel will be able to move to external support.
    
    As was pointed out earlier, the question really is, what needs to be
    accomplished by CSC.

    
    re .46
    
    The memo writer did not approve placing the memo in NOTEs so it wasn't
    posted. The author of .0 has been in contact with CSC folks (who do not
    seem to be aware of the new policy) and the memo has been forwarded to
    the CSC. Perhaps we will get an official response AND permission to
    post it here. 
    
    

    What ever you do, please do not do anything to decrease the
    availability of resources such as the CSC to the people in the field.
    
    I service customers, I fix their problems.  Am I trained?  You bet.  I
    have several areas of expertise.  However, my customers frequently need
    help in areas where my skills aren't current, if the exist at all.  I'm
    a quick learner, I read the f*** manuals.  These things take time, and
    customer satisfaction does not always permit it.  CSC has saved my rear
    many times, and help me satisfy many customers.  I try not to call when
    it is not necessary, but when I do call, it is usually because I need
    an answer or an opinion immediately.
    
    I love notes.  It is one of my favorite benifits.  However, notes take
    time.  I do not always have access to the network, and the netwrok is
    not always up.  If the customer asks me a question at 8 am that I can't
    answer, it is not feasable to wait until I get home that night to find
    the right notes file ask my question, go to work the next day, come
    home the next night, see if the question has been answered, clarify any
    questions......  Plus notes don't guarentee a response.
    
    Some people don't think CSC is set up to quickly answer tough
    questions.  And at times in the past I would have agreed with them, but
    I've watched the various CSC groups grow and mature over the years, and
    I've built good relationships with many of the support people.  When
    you use CSC use it wisely.  Ask intelligent questions, have your data
    ready when you call, if the person you are talking to is having trouble
    suggest tactfully that they get help (don't dump them out of the loop
    they can learn too).
    
    Don't forget to say thanks.  It's corny, but it is important.  If
    someone from CSC goes out of their way to make sure you get the answer
    you need, send them a note and copy their manager.
    
    Enough rambling, CSC is important to both customers and internal
    people.  Make it easier not tougher to use.  If you are going to
    charge, fine (I think its a waste of admin time and money).  But if you
    charge don't do it in such a way that it discourages a single phone
    call from being made.  I agree we need to do a better admin job of
    tracking our curtomer contracts.  But if we get a call from someone
    without a contract, answer that question well and quickly.  Document
    it.  Then its up to the local office, confirm if they have a contract
    or not.  If they do make sure the database gets updated.  If not use
    the example of how they got their questioned answered to sale them a
    service contract.  
    
    One last comment, traditionally we have done a poor job of explaining
    to the customer how our support services work when they do purchase
    them.
    
    Later,
    
    Rob

    re .54.....very well said....

    Well, this is a very interesting and lengthy (55 replies) note but it
    may be just an exercise in public debate since the original entry may
    not be based on reality. To the best of my knowledge (and I am in the
    CSC), there is no such policy. Apparently somebody made this thing up
    for his/her own reasons. If anyone has a copy of such a policy ISSUED
    BY THE CSC please post it here.
    

    
    I have a copy of the memo from the country EIS business manager
    explaining the program to EIS. I will not post it as he did not provide
    permission to do so. As previously stated, the CSC now has a copy of
    the memo and we are awaiting their official response. 
    
    

    In some cases, internal and external CSC groups may be separate, but
    certainly not in all cases.  My team (VAX/VIA) handles both internal
    and external calls.  We can tell when the caller is internal by the way
    the access number is denoted as a badge number on the CSCTLS software
    screen (one exception is that some "external" callers are actually
    Digital employees who have a special support contract, but that is
    usually labeled as such).  I just took a look at the last 200 calls
    that I have closed; in 27 of them (13.5%), the caller was identified
    with a Digital employee badge number.

    -- Mike

    First,
    
    I posted .0.  I have been contacted by a manager at the CSC who is now
    in possession of the memos I received.  Apparently this charge scheme
    came as a surprise to (at least) some of the people there too.  She
    indicated that the issue is being worked through the system and someone
    will contact me once there is some resolution.
    
    re: .48:
    
    
>have nothing against this and most always get rapid, accurate reponses from 
>NOTES conferences I always thought that it was "corporate policy" that the
>information in the NOTES conferences IS NOT to be used as an official
>support vehicle/statement from Digital.
    
    According to the memo received, we are to use
    
    FSIN, DSIN, and NOTES.  Since all 3 are listed in the memo, I presume
    they all carry the same weight of official sanction!  There is no
    declaration in the memo that an answer you receive from a notes
    conference is not as "official" as one from DSIN or FSIN.
    
    re .49:
    
>    escalation of critical calls, but for everyday, not time-critical stuff
>    I got sick of calling and getting someone who I had to explain the
>    features of the product to first before I could get a questioon
>    answered.  It usually took several calls and several days before I
>    finally got someone who knew as much about the product as I did. Once I
    
    In the six years I've been calling Colorado I have had VERY few times
    when I was not able to get assistance from someone who could help. 
    Occasionally I've reached someone who did not have a sufficient grasp
    of the product, but in virtually EVERY case they contacted someone with
    the required knowledge to help.  Again, (without attempting to open a
    different rathole) this is specific to Colorado - I have had results
    similar to your description with some other CSCs.
    
    re .50:
    
>    	Bottom line is that all the internal calls take away from CUSTOMER
>    	calls.  (I'd say that somewhere between 10-25% of our daily call
>    	volume is from internal calls.  15% of my calls are internal.)  
    
    Joe, a lot of what you say is probably correct, but I disagree with the
    statement that internal calls "take away" from customer calls.  I think
    the VAST majority of calls that come in from internal people are made
    to solve problems posed by, or for, customers.  And, even those not
    specific to a customer are frequently necessary to enhance the
    specialists knowledge of a product or assist with or make possible a
    customer demonstration.  
    
    I understand the frustration with those who want the CSC to design
    their application, lack the necessary training, or just don't want to
    RTFM, but how often is this a specialist problem?  Lack of training is
    very frequent considering how often we are thrown into situations we
    know nothing about, with products we may have never seen, for customers
    we don't know from Adam.  Given the high level of ignorance in these
    situations, compounded by pressure to produce something, it doesn't
    surprise me that a specialist in this situation would grasp at the CSC
    for design help.  As far as not RTFM - there are places out here in the
    field where manuals, or documentation of any kind, are considered a
    luxury.  You can't read 'em if you ain't got 'em.  
    
    re .51:
    
>    a time, as people who don't know about the new policy will continue
>    to call the CSC for help.
    
>    The second result is that lots of Field CCmgrs will blow their stacks
>    when they get the eventual bill.  These managers will immediately tell
>    their people to quit calling the CSC altogether, or at least without
    
>    The third result is that specialists caught in the middle will struggle
>    along for awhile, but eventually give in to the idea that our internal
>    support system is totally blown, and it's time to look for some "backdoor" 
    
>    The fourth result is that the field will narrow down the list of
>    products that they will support, and non-mainstream products will
>    get short shrift from both Sales and EIS.  I can't count the number
    
>    The final result is that customer satisfaction will suffer, and no
>    one will be able to point to a single factor that caused the problem.
    
    FINALLY!  This is really close to the set of scenarios I started out
    with...  but in addition I found a new one Friday.  Specialist is told
    "don't make any internal calls to CSC".  So, the specialist keeps the
    SPS contract information from customer X (who has a nice selection of
    products to have problems with) and just uses it for ALL call to CSC! 
    If you make the rules of the game stupider people will either give up,
    or find a way around the rules.  Either way, Digital loses.
    
    re .56:
    
>    Well, this is a very interesting and lengthy (55 replies) note but it
>    may be just an exercise in public debate since the original entry may
>    not be based on reality. 
    
    You figure I"ve got nothing better to do than make up this kind of
    thing for sh*ts and giggles?  Trust me, I may not be allowed to post
    the memo (I don't make the rules, I just get stuck by them), but it
    states in VERY unambiguous terms
    
    PLEASE DISTRIBUTE AND REVIEW THIS INFORMATION TO EVERY  PERSON IN YOUR
    DISTRICT

    use DSIN 

    use FSIN
    
    use Notes 

    Call the EIS/E Service Access Center (hope YOU folks are prepared for a
    big increase in business).  So what do we do before 8 a.m. or after 4
    p.m.?
    
    For REMOTE SALES SUPPORT 1-800-DEC-SALE (good luck)

    >If anyone has a copy of such a policy ISSUED BY THE CSC please post it
    >here.
    
    As I said at the top, the CSC has the memos and is looking into this.
    

re: .59

>    FINALLY!  This is really close to the set of scenarios I started out
>    with...  but in addition I found a new one Friday.  Specialist is told
>    "don't make any internal calls to CSC".  So, the specialist keeps the
>    SPS contract information from customer X (who has a nice selection of
>    products to have problems with) and just uses it for ALL call to CSC! 

Yeah, i've seen this happen with internal IS groups too (get an SPS contract
on one system and use it for calls on 99 other systems).  My question as far
as Field-originated calls is: do a significant number of these not have a
valid (customer) contract number for the call or is it just not known at
the time the call is made?  If the former, why?
								paul

re .58

I've been in the field (Software Services) at DEC for 6 years and I only
found out about FSIN and DSIN several months ago, and I am probably the only
person in my district with an account. And I don't want to say how long it
actually took to track down (a) that it existed and (b) where I had to go to
get an account enabled.

If we are going to tell people to use certain systems then 

 -- we should tell them about it

 -- have a plan to support their use; I can tell you right now that if FSIN
    and DSIN became the first resort, before NOTES, those systems would be
    immediately swamped and useless.

We're a company of * 1 2 0 , 0 0 0 * people. Before arbitrary decisions are
made, people should think about the _scope of impact_ of what they're
proposing.

Arrgghhh!

/Peters

P.S. Don't mind me, I've had a long weekend.

Re: .59

>>have nothing against this and most always get rapid, accurate reponses from 
>>NOTES conferences I always thought that it was "corporate policy" that the
>>information in the NOTES conferences IS NOT to be used as an official
>>support vehicle/statement from Digital.
>    
>    According to the memo received, we are to use
>    
>    FSIN, DSIN, and NOTES.  Since all 3 are listed in the memo, I presume
>    they all carry the same weight of official sanction!  There is no
>    declaration in the memo that an answer you receive from a notes
>    conference is not as "official" as one from DSIN or FSIN.

Presumably the memo you are talking about is from *your* management, and is
not binding on the groups actually supporting the products (i.e. the people
who would be answering your questions).  Some groups explicitly say that
NOTES is an official support channel and some do not.  For example, if a
customer calls you about a problem with DECwindows and needs an immediate
response, you shouldn't just put a note in the DECWINDOWS conference and then
wait for an answer.  The developers are under no obligation to answer your
questions, and if they are busy working on something else they might not even
open the conference for a few days.  Even if you get an answer, it could be
from a non-developer who isn't aware of all of the facts.

				-- Bob

    re: .60
    
>My question as far
>as Field-originated calls is: do a significant number of these not have a
>valid (customer) contract number for the call or is it just not known at
>the time the call is made?  If the former, why?
    
    Both conditions exist.  If you're working late with a problem, you may
    not have access to the customer's access code, as the customer is
    not likely to be around.  Perhaps we will have to make it S.O.P. to
    obtain the customer's access number at the beginning of a residency or
    project.
    
    Other customers may not have a CSC service contract.  We try to sell
    them (and we do pretty well in our District -- but most of our
    customers are rather large), but this doesn't always pan out.
    The problem is that our customers are paying anywhere from two to five
    times the going rate for our consulting services to get the "Digital
    Difference".  If the "DD" is going to exclude our internal support
    channels, then they are paying premium prices for very little reason.
    
    We've already received our first VP memo stating that we have to be
    careful with our usage of the CSC and that we need to try to reduce our
    usage numbers (our region or whatever is a heavy user of the CSC) to be in
    line with some of the other regions.  It wasn't a "don't use the CSC ever"
    message, but I could certainly see how the tone might change within a
    District close to its budget at year-end.
    
    -- Russ

>    The problem is that our customers are paying anywhere from two to five
>    times the going rate for our consulting services to get the "Digital
>    Difference".  If the "DD" is going to exclude our internal support
>    channels, then they are paying premium prices for very little reason.

    About a dozen years ago when I was in SWS I asked my manager why
    companies were willing to pay such high rates for on-site work inc.
    residencies. The answer was support. I was told that they were willing
    to pay the big bucks because they, the customer, knew that if a
    resident had a problem they could call for all kinds of help. Sounds
    like that edge is going away. If so then what does differentiate SWS
    from Joe Blow Consulting?

    		Alfred

        THIS MEMO IS TO CLARIFY THE PURPOSE AND INTENT OF THE NEW EIS PSS 
        BACK-UP SUPPORT PROCESS.
        
        *****************************************************************
        As the person within the U.S. PSS organization who has worked 
        with both the Regional PSS Business Managers and the CSC 
        organization to develop the Back-up Support Process, the 
        following comments are intended to communicate as clearly as 
        possible the purpose and intent motivating the enactment of the 
        new Back-up Support Process.
        
        
        o  First, please understand that the main purpose of the new 
           process is to provide information as to how and were to get 
           back-up support and to provide that support as efficiently and 
           cost effectively as possible.  The process is NOT intended in 
           any way to limit support to the field or to limit access to 
           the CSC's.
        
        o  Yes, the EIS organization does have to control costs and one 
           way to do that is to put a process in place that in some 
           EQUITABLE way accounts for the services being used.
        
        o  For example, would it be better to use FSIN or DSIN before 
           calling the CSC's?  If a PSS specialist is using the CSC for 
           training, is it appropriate to expect the CSC to absorb that 
           cost rather than the cost center manager?  
        
        o  There must also be a way to measure the value of services 
           offered by any organization.  If there is some charge for 
           services rendered, it is my experience that the services have 
           more value to the user and the value also challenges the user 
           to use the resources more effectively, and, that is good for 
           EIS PSS specifically, and Digital in general.
        
        o  The funding negotiations between U.S. EIS PSS and the CSC 
           organization intended to reimburse the CSC's at "cost" for 
           services rendered and are not intended to produce a "profit" 
           to that organization.
         
        o  The charge for access to the CSC's is forecasted to be 
           slightly over $100. per hour.  Historically, calls have 
           averaged approximately 30 minutes each, which would make the 
           anticipated AVERAGE cost per call, approximately $50.
        
        o  The measuring of value also challenges the service provider to 
           supply a higher level of service.  When the field KNOWS that 
           they are paying for a service, they will demand more and that 
           is good for the CSC organization.
         
        o  The process in intended to encourage the costs of back-up 
           support to be build into the cost of a project if customers do 
           not have an SPS contract.
        
        o  The process is also intended to encourage EIS field people to 
           recommend the benefits of, and encourage the customer to buy, 
           an SPS contract.
        
        In conclusion, IF ANYONE HAS ANY CONSTRUCTIVE IDEAS AS TO HOW 
        THIS KIND OF MEASUREMENT AND CONTROL CAN BE BETTER HANDLED, 
        PLEASE CONTACT ME, I WOULD LIKE VERY MUCH TO HEAR YOUR 
        SUGGESTIONS.
        
        Louis Offstein @STO
        DTN, 445-6541
        Outside, 314-991-6541
        
        
        
        

    I don't believe that .65 addresses an important point that has been
    raised in previous notes, but then I don't know what relationship .65's
    justifications bear to the actual "corporate" justifications for this
    policy.

    The point raised is that we *do* tell our customer that our EIS/PSS
    prices are justified because they are getting more than just one
    body's worth of expertise.  We say that our prices are justified, because
    we have *THE* experts available to us, either at CSC/TBU or through
    them to CSSE and Central Engineering.   The customer is already paying
    for this and we already make margin to pay for this.

    I think that the arguement that this is another way for EIS to pay for
    what they already pay for really misses the reality of life in the
    field.  I want to reiterate that this will be a powerful disincentive
    to use a *very* effective tool for customer satisfaction.  Managers
    that I can see already appear nervous about this charge.

    2 new points - 

    This policy strongly affects my personal view of what my job is about.
    I probably call the CSC about once every other month, maybe more if
    I run into a problematic product, but everyday I know that if I'm having a 
    problem I can, indeed, I am encouraged to get to get the *right* solution
    to that problem through an official channel.  I use notes *first* if
    I can get to them, but I trust CSC to not give me the wrong answer. At
    least they are accountable for that answer in a way that is not possible
    in notes (as currently structured).  To the customer the field person
    *is* Digital, and the answer we give is loaded with an authority that
    a third party doesn't have.  We don't get any slack for making a mistake.
    We lose credibility and Digital looses credibility.
   
    It is true that CSC is used for some questions that training could answer.
    The reality is that there isn't time or money for us to be well trained
    on every product or on every feature of a product that is needed in our 
    jobs.  Last month I did some ALL-IN-1 programming, this month I'll be doing
    ULTRIX system management.  

    I probably depended more on CSC to aguement my training and experience
    with ALL-IN-1 than I ever have before.  I took training for ALL-IN-1 and 
    put in the extra time to learn to be competent (and read the manuals)
    before I ever called CSC, but I thought it was justified to call and ask
    them about the performance impact of a design I came up with for a critical
    system and to be sure I hadn't overlooked a more appropriate feature of 
    the product to exploit.  This took 15 minutes and added the stamp of 
    experience to what I did.  --  If the company needs to keep giving 
    excellent service on a wide and changing product set, make the support 
    tools easier for us to use; we'll make more money that way and get smarter 
    faster!

    I think this issue should strike at least as close to the heart of the
    the EIS organization as the company car.  Why can't we make our needs
    felt on this issue?

    - Beth  	(a personal best for longest position statement in Notes
    		  -- I'd really rather be doing my job )

Anyone remember back a few years when Q4 rolled around and the SDC (now the SSB)
shipped out full VMS doc sets to SWS folks all over the US and charged $Ks to
'make budget' for the year?  Our CC manager went through the roof, and did
many others.  End result was that heads rolled at SDC and the charges were
backed out.

Same principle -- you do what you have to to 'make your metrics' regardless of 
the impact to the company.

So much for the 'big picture' team approach.

Steve

    I think that the internal support charges should be done on a zero sum
    basis- i.e. charge back to those cost centers that use the CSC the
    actual costs involved in keeping an internal staff. The CSC should
    not 'profit' from internal customers.
    
    If this is not done then it will benefit the CSC to have increasingly
    more calls... buggy products? No problem, they make us [the CSC] more
    money!
    
    BTW- Will the internal users have to pay just to call to get a patch
    from the CSC? in some situations the CSC is the *only* place to obtain
    the patch!
    
    Lee

    I have sent mail to the author of .65, who coincidentally is listed in
    the original memo as the individual to whom comments and suggestions
    should be addressed, requesting him to post the text of the original
    memo so that people here will have real information rather than
    speculation to work with.  
    
    BTW:  Today I attempted to use one of the primary alternatives to the
    CSC listed in the original memo.  Unfortunately, for over an hour my
    repeated attempts to contact the Software Access Center resulted only
    in a recorded message that the person I was attempting to contact (the
    central dispatch number I believe) was busy and therefore not
    available.  Eventually, I gave up and called Colorado.
    
    

	Well well well...I'm glad to see someone has finally seen the
    light and has at least attempted to implement a free market information
    sharing system in this corporate socialist bureaucracy we all work in.
    The problem is though, that the idea of charging on a per-call basis
    falls far short of the "Info-Market" proposal in note #1024.

	Despite its many merits, the main problem with the call-charging
    idea is that from here on out, the future CSC "customer" who "logs a
    call" to the CSC is charged regardless of whether they are actually
    "buying" any valuable information (support services) or not.  Likewise,
    as has been pointed out in previous replies, even a person who calls
    to offer a bug report or to relay what would have previously been
    considered to be "free" help to the CSC (and/or the rest of the
    corporation) is now ironically going to be charged as well.  This is
    a little like charging a person $100 to enter your store (regardless
    of whether they want to buy anything or not), and then allowing them
    to walk away with as much as they can carry in one trip.

	On the other hand, there are alternative methods of accessing
    information in this company (i.e. notesfiles, etc.), and Digital
    is not the company that makes money using the phone lines.  If this
    is merely the precursor to a [yet to be announced] on-line free-market
    internal/external information sharing system of some sort (ala note
    #1024), then it makes a good deal of sense.  If instead, this is to
    permanently substitute for such an on-line support system, then I
    foresee many unsolved problems which have yet to be addressed.

				    -davo

Re:   <<< Note 1326.70 by CSC32::S_MAUFE "Simon Maufe, CSC/Colorado Springs" >>>

    I'll take exception to your exception. I stand by my assertion.
    Take off your 'support specialist' hat for a moment and don your
    'bean counter' cap and continue reading....
        
    I was trying to take nothing from the support staff of the CSC.
    I'm speaking in terms of 'funny money' and the managers that are
    measured by it, which is separate from the dedication and desires
    of those at the CSC delivering the services.
        
    What I am implying is that when a FIXED PRICE of $X ($100 or
    whatever) is being charged for INTERNAL support calls then that
    organization's BOTTOM LINE PROFIT will INCREASE with the number of
    calls. In my first paragraph in .68 I suggested that actual costs
    be the basis of charges back to the user CC instead of a fixed cost
    per call.
    
.68>CSC does not revel in other peoples misfortune, we are thank good ness
.68>professionals, and unlike .68, not had frontal labotomies.

    I'll admit to making a vague and offhand comment but certainly not
    a frontal labotomy!
    
    If indeed the INTERNAL SUPPORT section of the CSC is now chartered
    to make a 'profit' instead of just charging what the actual costs
    are, then I stand by my statement. No INTERNAL support organization
    should be showing a 'profit'. Period.  An organization supporting
    EXTERNAL customers is a different matter.

    My growing impression (right or wrong) is that within Digital the
    motto "do the right thing" is increasingly being ignored in favor
    of "make my numbers look good". In that light a manager of a group
    that is receiving a fixed amount of 'funny money' for each call
    (and is focusing on profits) *might* have the attitude of 'let the
    s/w be bug-riddled, it makes me profitable'.
    
    Lee Roth
    

re: .72,

    	Speaking of "funny money", has anyone ever wondered what it is
    that makes internal [corporate or institutional] money so "funny"
    to begin with?  It's the same reason that the Ruble is percieved as
    a such a humorous form of currency in the USSR: internal "funny money"
    is not circulated in a free market environment, and IMHO, this is one
    of the main reasons why such internal currency (funny money) is so
    inherently meaningless.

    	Face it, while certain cost centers within DEC cross-charge for
    their internal products and services rendered, many more cost centers
    are still funded by a sort of centrally controlled corporate entity,
    and need only grease the political wheels of DEC for continued funding.
    Lacking any sort of free market means of earning income, these same
    centrally funded entities within the corporation must instead be measured
    by other sorts of metrics (which is where all the bean-counting and
    political brown-nosing that we all love so dearly comes into play).

    	If a consistent free market system of internal trade could be
    established and utilized by *all* groups, then perhaps internal
    currency exchange would be taken seriously for once, and no longer
    would such money be so funny.

    	As I eluded to in a previous reply, despite the fact that there are
    still many details to be worked out in this plan, I am still encouraged
    by what appears to be yet another move towards such an internal free
    market economy.  I think that the more DEC is able to fully implement
    such a free market economy within its own corporation, where the 
    entrepreneurs (as opposed to the political hacks) are the ones who
    succeed, then the better DEC as a whole will be able to survive in
    the free market economy of the real world where the same is true.

    				    -davo

I'd like to explore an idea suggested serveral replies ago that I feel
quite strongly about.

I think that CSC is pushing their costs in the wrong direction.  Rather
than charging the callers, they should be charging the product groups
they are supporting.

Think of it this way.  A customer (internal or external) calls CSC looking
for a solution to a problem or an explanation of some difficult-to-understand
point in some product.  CSC helps them out.  Not only does this appease the
customer, but it also helps the PRODUCT.  This help has positive value.
Therefore, CSC is justified in passing the COST of handling the call to
the product group which received the VALUE.

Another way of looking at it is to say that the product groups are
subcontracting telephone support to CSC.  The product groups should have
to pay for this - hopefully based on the actual COST to CSC to handle
that product's support.

The other side of the coin now becomes this:  If a product group can come
up with a cheaper or more effective way to answer the phone (lower COST
for the same VALUE), it should be allowed to do so.  Maybe they'd implement
a Product Hotline that rings a red phone right there in some office in the
development group's area.

This way, if CSC isn't cost-effective in their handling of a product's
support needs, the product group can go elsewhere.  Free market.
Accountability.  Other advantages.

The product groups will also find it directly profitable to improve the quality
of their software and documentation, since the number of calls to CSC would
decrease and the product group's CSC expense would be reduced correspondingly.
Direct motivation and feedback to the development group.

Here's another way to look at it:  The user who has a problem with
some product does not get a BENEFIT by having that problem solved.
They didn't ask for the problem, and having it solved only puts them
back to EVEN.  By charging them $100 to get the problem solved, we
are now passing the costs of our products' problems to the users.  Instead,
we should be passing these costs back to the product groups.

A product whose support costs are too high will (justly) fail to make a profit.
There is something wrong with that product - not with the product's users!
A clean, easy-to-use product will profit accordingly.

This approach keeps the channels of communication open and passes costs
to those who ARE getting the benefits - the product groups.

Nowhere in this model is there room for CSC's pushing the costs OUTWARD to
the customers (internal or external) except in the case of calls for
what are essentially extended consulting services.  These should be negotiated
the way we (used to?) sell PL90 time to customers with really involved needs.

-steve-

Re .74:

	IF the primary job of the CSC was to provide an interface between 
    the customer and the development group for a particular product, the
    procedure you suggest would make sense.  HOWEVER, that is NOT what the
    CSCs primary function turns out to be.

	The CSC serves more as a consultant to the customer than as a clerk
    to the developers.  The CUSTOMERS find it is more cost effective to hire
    DEC people to read the manuals for them, and do it diligently, than to pay
    their own people to spend time going through the massive amounts of 
    documentation we provide.  We can find them an answer to a question in
    a few minutes.  Their own people might spend two or three hours finding 
    the same information.  When you include all the costs, that two or three
    hours will cost them more than the contract does.  The same should be
    true for internal calls.  The charge back is there to encourage the local
    people to make SOME effort to find the answer before they call the CSC.

	However, this effectiveness is largely a result of the scale of 
    the operation.  The CSCs have developed tools that make it easier to help
    customers find information.  Those tools have cost a lot of money.  If
    each product line were alowed to do their own support, they would have to
    build tools to help them do the job.  Individually they don't have that
    much money they can put into support.  They would not have the money to
    do the job really effectively and there would be a lot of duplication of
    facilities.  By requiring that customer support be centralized, this
    duplication is eliminated and the cost to the company as a whole is 
    reduced.

    Re .-2
    
    So you think engineering groups should fund the CSCs? Well that would
    be fine and dandy if the engineering groups got to see some of the
    service revenue. As it is at present the engineering groups have to
    invest in engineers to do top level support but they get ZIP on the
    revenue side from service revenue. All the service revenue is accounted
    for in Customer Services.
    
    Engineering groups end up having to use investment that is meant for
    R&D to do ongoing product support. This really screws up P&Ls because
    there is no associated service revenue to go against the expense.
    
    Dave

re: .76 (note everything below refers to software only, not hardware)

Not sure what the underlying mechanism should be, in financial terms,
but it does seem like there should be some horizontal (or do i mean
vertical?  sheesh%-}) integration by product, or perhaps product family.

Does CSC forecast and get revenues on a per product basis?  Or are they
"jacks-of-all-trades", and hence vulnerable on the expense side when a
truly poorly engineered product makes it out the door?  If the former,
then i'd agree with you (.76) all the way, but if the latter then some
sort of chargeback to engineering would seem "fair" (although i don't
know if it would make sense from an administrative "minimize paper
transactions/cut red tape" perspective).  Who else is goaled on revenues
by product?  Marketing, i would think, if they're the ones supplying the
product requirements and given the major "yea/nay" vote on functionality
(but i keep hearing in the MARKETING Notes conference that marketing is
not uniformly given responsibility for these proactive duties in DEC).
Sales?  Do they do their revenue forecasting by product?  I don't know.

Also does Sales sell service as well as products?  If so then they would
bear some responsibility for CSC costs (and revenues) too.  So a bad
Sales forecast could leave the CSC with not enough or too many resources
--but only in conjunction with good or bad Engineering.  An extremely
popular product with a few quality problems would most likely impact
the CSC more than a very buggy product that sold next to nil.  I think.

In fact, i'm ashamed of how little i know about how these activies work
in DEC, having been here for a not insignificant number of years.  The
only thing i feel like i could say for sure (and i might be wrong about
that too!) is that Manufacturing costs for software should not have a
per product basis.

								paul

    Re .-1
    
    I'm talking software as well. The way it works is as followed (greatly
    simplified, I don't know all the details anyways).
    
    PBUs (Engineering/Marketing/Product Mgt) groups build products
    and have a P&L. REvenue is derived from Software Licenses. Expenses are
    the expenses to engineer the product. Note that for each product sold
    the PBU gets a 1 time licence revenue. New versions go to the customer
    for free if the customer has bought a service contract.
    (see discussion of service revenue below)
    As the number of sold products increases the burden on the engineering
    group to maintain those products increases. Maintenance includes
    jumping
    every time VMS or SQM jumps, jumping ebery time a new processor comes
    out that needs certification etc. Gradually more and more budget is
    used to support your existing product set. Guess what this is the same
    budget that is used for new product development. Your existing product
    line now looks unprofitable (you only get revenue for new licences
    sold and zip for the installed base, meanwhile most of your expenses
    are taken up maintaining the installed base and doing maintenance
    releases).
    
    Meanwhile the Services Organization is deriving a hefty service revenue
    stream from the customer. This is recurrent, the customer pays each
    year. The PBU sees none of this (not quite true but pretty close).
    Thus the incentive is for the PBU to scrimp on maintenance in order to
    do new development.
    
    What should happen, in my view, is that the service revenue stream
    should partialy be used to fund the PBUs to do a first class
    maintenance job. Guess what, higher quality product, less front line
    support needed, more money for Digital as a whole.
    
    I'm not sure I've got this quite right, would anybody who knows more
    about how PBUs are funded care to correct any major errors or
    omissions.
    
    Dave
    

    I think that many of the issues discussed are good, and have help
    raised everyones awareness of how the funding issues work. I have some
    comments on some of them.
    
    1) I think the CSC should look at the groups that they support
    internally and ask for the funding that is required to provide that
    support. Not to do so would:
     - reduce the level of service available to the paying customer
       which could then inflate the price to that customer.
     - allow other groups to see the real cost of their operation
       (In this day and age I think all groups should see their real
        costs, if they don't - then how can they control them.)
     - ensure that the internal groups could get the level of service
       that they require by providing the funding.
    
    Lets face it - have you every ordered a piece of h/w kit internally
    and expect it to be free. No, it is correct that your part of the
    operation should pick up the costs associated with having people
    in Manufacturing to make it.
    
    2) Charging on a per call basis would not be MY prefered method.
    CC transfers do have an administation cost associated with them. I
    would suggest it is better to understand the resourse required to
    support a function in total - say based on last year's call volume. Then
    negociate with that Function (eg EIS) to have the headcount funded. If they
    use more resourse than expected, just make sure that it's right
    next year. (I suspect that $100 is `non' profit making. In the
    UK I would not be making any margin on that figure)
    
    3) Should Customer Services fund the Engineering groups for the work
    they do. As a Customer Services person, I would not object if fair. I expect
    IS to charge me. I expect A&L to charge me...etc. We
    would pass those costs on in our service charges to the paying customer.
    
    (We have to be a little bit careful because in someways CS are
    providing a Warrenty service to customers on behalf of Engineering.
    In Europe some of these costs are covered in a revenue transfer
    from the Systems to the Service business but it is not much. You could
    argue that Engineering should fund CS more. Somewhere along the line some
    probably said `Let's call it quits')
    
    Someone made the comment earlier on (I can't remember who)
    along the lines of `Raise a CLD and we'll do it for free'. I'll
    like to know if they know how Digital makes the money to pay
    their wages? If you want to support everyone, go ahead but ask
    your manager if he has the resourse to do that.
    
    David.

    A few thoughts 3 weeks later:
    
    1 - So what happened to the mysterious original memo?  If its author
    wanted it circulated to everyone in lots of cost centers, why would the
    author have a problem giving permission to post it here?  Did the 
    author get hit by a truck or what?
    
    2 - According to the Louis Offstein reply somewhere in here, the
    proposed CSC charge is $100 per hour - *not* $100 per call.
    
    3 - So let's continue on this "free-market" theme.  If the CSC wants
    to charge $100 per hour for internal calls, fine.  Let local offices 
    charge the CSC $100 per hour per technical LOR.  Fair is fair.
    
    4 - I've learned in 9 plus years at Digital that the "official" answer
    to a policy question depends on who you ask. Thus the debate over the
    official support channels.  The "official" answer depends on who you
    ask.
    
    - Greg Scott

>    1 - So what happened to the mysterious original memo?  If its author
>    wanted it circulated to everyone in lots of cost centers, why would the
>    author have a problem giving permission to post it here?  Did the 
>    author get hit by a truck or what?
    
    Well, Greg, its like this:
    
    I sent mail to Louis Offstein in response to his reply in this note -
    recommending that he post the pertinent text in this note or give me
    or some other agent permission to do so.  He declined to do so (at
    least to this point), nor did he even deign to respond to my mail by
    mail or other means.  If you wish to see the text of the memo, walk
    down 1 floor and stop in my cube.  I"ll be happy to show it to you.
    
>    2 - According to the Louis Offstein reply somewhere in here, the
>    proposed CSC charge is $100 per hour - *not* $100 per call.
    
    As above, the information I have is $100/call.  Period.  Come on down
    and you can read it for yourself.
    
>    3 - So let's continue on this "free-market" theme.  If the CSC wants
>    to charge $100 per hour for internal calls, fine.  Let local offices 
>    charge the CSC $100 per hour per technical LOR.  Fair is fair.
    
    I received a call from Alberta Bailey, a manager at the CSC, when this
    started.  She, and (according to her) others at the CSC were completely
    unaware of this situation, and attempted to clarify what was happening. 
    In my final conversation with her she indicated that the decision had
    been made at a higher level.  Period.
    
>    4 - I've learned in 9 plus years at Digital that the "official" answer
>    to a policy question depends on who you ask. Thus the debate over the
>    official support channels.  The "official" answer depends on who you
>    ask.
    
    Well, it appears that the only group in the country that even received
    this memo was EIS in MPO...  I"ll be curious to see what happens in
    about 6 months if a bill shows up for calls from Sales Support to the
    CSC on 525-7104...  but, then again, maybe not!

    I haven't heard anything proposed for the Atlanta CSC.....I work
    in Remote Sales Support.....we are funded by the Sales organization
    and provide pre-sales assistance......if you aren't part of the
    sales organization, you don't get through to us.
    
    There are also hardware units dedicated to support our Field Service
    engineers.....when I was in FS it was my understanding that Field
    Service as a whole funded that group.
    
    If you're questioning the merits of software groups perhaps charging
    to support internal DEC people, maybe that isn't so outrageous.
    When I was part of another group, it was not uncommon to get calls
    from DEC internal folks seeking assistance with "how to use" that
    piece of equipment on their desks.
    
    The CSC's are *obligated* to provide SW support to DEC E/U's who 
    purchase their SW or HW under Standard Warranty or have SW maintenance
    agreements.  The support groups get bogged down *now* just by the
    shear load of customers calling in.  Should we put the paying 
    customers in the back-seat to provide support to a DEC internal
    free of charge?
    
    Karen