Conference 7.286::digital

    	We (DIGITAL) are one company.  Rejoice that the overseas
    	"competition" is not from another company.
    
    	Call that branch and verify the offer.  Perhaps some of the
    	savings is in the exchange rate.  Will it be shipped from
    	overseas too?
    
    	Can you match the offer and still make a profit?  If so, do
    	it!  If not, find out why another office is selling at a loss.
    
    	Maybe we are overpricing all our stuff here.  Find out how they
    	are doing it.
    
    	The customer is still buying DIGITAL!  Rejoice!  "They" is "you"
    	in the long run.
    
    	Joe Oppelt
    	(Who admits that he doesn't know about the metrics your performance
    	is measured on...)

    
    One reason for the price discrepancy could be that US, Europe and GIA
    each have their own pricing committee's. What is proposed by product
    teams as the list price for any given product is subject to "uplifts"
    by the various geography pricing committee's. US PAC is notorious for
    placing uplifts on products like VAXstations among others. Pricing
    committee's also have the option of not even allowing a given product
    to be sold within their areas of responsibility - this is the reason a
    customer can buy multi-user VAXstation licenses in Europe but the same
    product is not available at any price for customers in the U.S.
    
    Of course, none of this answers what the solution to the stated problem
    might be, but I think it may be the reason that you see  a quote
    from another office residing in a different geography than yours
    uses different pricing. 
    
    If this is the reason, you should be able to match the other location's 
    quote by working with your ops people and making them aware of it.
    
    -Joe
    

Keep working happily on getting the sale.  Make contact with the overseas
office.  Charge your time to them -- hopefully the new management system
will let you easily do that and get credit for the work at home even though
the sale goes somewhere else.

Be one company, trying to sell our leading products to customers who want
them.

                       W o r k   T o g e t h e r !

/john

    Now there's a switch-around !
    
    For years, I had to negotiate additional discounts with my customer, a
    major European telecoms operation with global operations, just because
    their US operation could buy everything in the US at lower prices. They
    could buy either directly from local Digital US offices, or more likely
    through distributors exporting outside the US, probably against their 
    licence conditions.
    
    _Big_ European customers demanded a pricing policy to be developed 
    and implemented to cover the major discrepancy in street prices between
    the US and Europe.  That policy was called STEED. Each quarter, a
    standard basket of products was calculated on both US and European (14
    countries) prices, and an additional discount was available to keep the
    street prices similar on both sides of the Atlantic.
    
    It was expected (and happened) that the pricing variance would
    gradually diminish, as the manufacturing cost became a smaller item in
    the overall cost model.  (Other major influences were the forward dollar 
    rate, cost of shipment and customs duties, and the value-added by the
    local European DEC operations).
    
    STEED was due to be replaced by a Global Pricing Strategy for major
    customers..... did this ever happen ?
    
    
    Empathies
    
    John
    
    
    
    companies

    The Global pricing policy has become World Wide Pricing.  When quoting
    business to the largest accounts who have chosen the WWP option, we
    must quote in those numbers.  This happened around the end of August
    from memory.
    
    Calvin (in UK)

I'm surprised by some of these replies.  I thought internal competition was
a no-no.  Besides the booking-credit and all that, that is so important to sales
metrics (rep and district), I don't see how it makes any sense to compete
with ourselves.  Isn't that kinda like husband and wife going to the same 
auction and bidding on the same painting at the same time.  Certainly you
may get the painting, but you are guarenteed to pay too much for it.  While
this 'might' make sense in a charity situation... (we (Digital) still have
to pay cost of sales, don't we?)

Mark

As an aside, I am told of a situation where a foreign division of Digital
called the customer, and told them that if they didn't buy from Digital
xxx (insert ountry name), then Digital xxx (insert country name) would not 
support/service the equipment.

    Ha!
    
    How poetic...
    
    I used to work in Australia (aka south Pacific Region). 
    
    THey are part of GIA. GIA in there infinite wisdom make decision on
    what SPR can and cannot sell, and at what sorts of prices. THey add a
    large amount of unnecessary cost, as a result of which SPR runs at
    almost two times MLP as their country list price.
    
    A friend of mine is a consultant. One of his customers in Australia. (A
    DEC Corporate account incidentally), gives up after weeks of trying to
    get a DEC rep to take an order for a few million dollars worth of
    hardware. Place on order in AUstralia, and you are likely to wait 8-10
    weeks min for your System... SO he rings a hardware broker. He has a
    quotation on his desk in under 4 hours, returns Purchase order the next
    day, the systems arrive within a week. HE pays the local DEC F/S office
    per call to install, and pays Day one DECservice. Finally the dec rep
    gets back to him. With Foreign Purchase, shipping, imprt duties, per
    call installation, and Paid for DECservice in lieu of Warranty
    coverage, his net cost is still 30% less than DEC was going to charge.
    And he is running 2-3 months ahead of schedule...
    
    THe broker sources his systems out of California
    (which is where the author of .0 is from)
    
    Q
    

    Maybe I misunderstand, but doesn't NMS permit, even encourage,
    competition between cost centers?  I should think that an extension of
    this would be that competition would increase at all levels for
    customer business.  In this case it sounds like one center is charging
    for hardware + support and the other is charging for hardware only, to
    oversimplify.  Under NMS I would expect the customer to choose between
    the two, or for someone to separately negotiate a service agreement.
    No?
    
    Steve

    re .6 "as an aside..."
    
    Perhaps they meant that they would not service the equipment under
    warranty if it was not bought in that country since I believe that it
    is still true that warranty is not transferrable from one country
    to another...
    
    annie

    re .6 (Mark)
    
    The "foreign subsidiary" you refer to doesn't happen to be the US, does
    it ?
    
    :-))
    
    John
    

Indeed, our customer witheld the name of the "foreign" DEC rep.  For that 
matter we don't even know for certain which country he is in.  Come to think
of it, the customer might even be bluffing in a witty attempt to convince us
to lower the price.

What's right is to continue business as usual.  Personally I think it would 
be fiscally unwise to a) withold local services, b) rebid to undercut our
faceless foreign internal competitor.

If Digital sells the equipment, we all win.  It is unfortunate that due to our
internal reporting methods, the individuals who've worked so hard to 
consummate the sale must risk not receiving credit whenever the sale might
occur.  But the right thing is still to make certain we pull it off without 
another glitch.

		-- Steve

    Steve,
    
    As the Account Manager, surely you get credit for _all_ sales to 
    your customer of whatever kind, or wherever placed, don't you ?
    
    At the end of last fiscal, the phones were buzzing with people claiming
    credit for sales in accounts that they had little more than a
    tangential interest in.
    
    Isn't "geography" now a subset of "account" ?  Thus if your account
    budget has provided the resource for work anywhere in the 
    world, aren't you entitled to the credit ?
    
    Similarly, if some other person has been working on the same customer
    project without your knowledge, isn't that perhaps a lack of
    coordination on the Account Manager's part ?
    
    I thought that was what "Global Accounts", "Entrepreneurship" and NMS
    was all about.
    
    John
    
    

    I don't know Steve, so I wouldn't presume to speak for him....but
    I thought the point he was trying to make was "if" he had been
    aware that another team was pitching to the same account....he would
    have applied his energies elsewhere, on other opportunities.
    
    Even if someone makes sure Steve gets credit for his time, that 
    doesn't really balance out that there was duplication of effort at
    the very least (perhaps more effort by Steve's group)....sure it is
    goodness that someone, somewhere within Digital got the sale....but
    perhaps if Steve had known up front, Digital could have booked sales
    at 2 DIFFERENT accounts instead of just one.....
    
    Karen
    

    Ah, yes!  But the point that I make from .0 is that HIS cost center
    incurred the expense of the pre-sale.  What I read between these lines
    is that the customer CLAIMS that he can get a better deal from another
    DEC agent in another geography.  Our noter in .0 (and his manager, I'm
    sure) would like some expense relief if the claim is true, or some way
    to verify the claim.  
    	
    We ARE one big company and the profit is profit, but the cost center
    idea makes us act like a bunch of small companies.  If the pre-sales
    efforts for this customer's account could be charged to an
    international charge code (and the credit for the sale to an
    international credit code) then it wouldn't really matter who sold what
    and who pre-sold which.  As long as we're setting up the international
    database (maybe vaxnotes) we might as well have a database of current 
    offered prices on specific products.

    Not knowing all the facts I will go easy on some of you you are
    apparently not plugged into how NMS and Sales mix.
    
    First - As a Pre-Sales Consultant I know the pain associated with doing
    all the up front work and having the order go elsewhere, even if the
    customer still buys DEC.
    	1. The rep and the unit may not get any credit.
    	2. The rep and the unit may get what is called shadow credit but
    not a hardware credit.
    	3. The rep and unit may only get a percentage.
    
    The local unit will eat the cost of the sale, that is a given.
    
    Second - Under NMS each sales rep and sales support person live and die
    by the amount of money the book into an account. I am not sure NMS is
    smart enough to credit the local folks with the sale if it is booked
    oversees, channels may be another story since that system tracks the
    sale to the account and the rep.
    
    Now the point of my story is if the rep get no credit, NMS says why do
    we need the reps overhead. Get the picture.
    
    Frank

    re .16
    
    So what you have showed me is that it's not important that DEC got the
    sale (hooray!) but only who gets the credit?
    
    I think that the measurement system needs a lot of work!!!!!
    

    If the account manager in the (presuming) US has anything to do with
    the sale that lands in the overseas branch of the same account, then 
    both account managers (US and overseas) will need to work out credit
    (split issues).  Unless this has changed I have experienced the same
    with my account.  What we should not do is assume the price is lower.
    Verify the price and work together.
    
    Just my opinion.
    Mike

    What is so difficult to understand about the base note?  I think we
    ALL realize the importance of DEC getting the sale.  As .16 said....
    attaboy pats on the back for being a team player doesn't hack it in
    the field......YES, it does matter who gets credit <-----it can impact
    an individual's salary continuation program (_read_ to be TFSO'd or
    not to be TFSO'd).
    
    The point I tried to make in my earlier response was that if 
    account team A realizes account team B is pitching to the Fred & Wilma
    Flintstone Aerospace Corporation at the same time and for whatever
    reasons account team B can beat A's price (and get the sale); account
    team A can cut its losses and turn its attention to the Rocket J.
    Squirrel Aerospace Corp. and hopefully DEC will wind up with 2 sales,
    not just one.
    
    Karen