Conference ilbbak::us_sales_service

    I couldn't agree more, Gene, but remember....before you order the
    necessary equipment to get our field offices to a level of
    technology where they are only about five years behind the prospective
    customer, make sure you have detailed justification, a cost analysis
    and payback study, seven levels of signatures, and a nine month wait.
    Also make sure some short-sighted VP doesn't put a hold on all capital
    equipment acquisitions.  So..........that was easy.  Now, what other
    problems do you have?
    
    Y'know, I wonder how much equipment could have been procured for the
    price of DECWorld??

    
    Another perspective...
    
    Over the past several years a lot of workstations and x-terminals were
    purchased in the old NY Area under NYA Capital and Corporate programs.
    Most of it languishes because there was NEVER a plan put in place for
    exactly who needed what and how would it ever be supported.
    
    In my opinion it's just as bad to have a million dollars in equipment
    lying around like a pile of junk as it is to have a VT100 connected to
    VAX-11/780's. 
    
    Without a professional staff to plan and manage computing resources,
    we will always have a patchwork of feast/famine in the field.
    
    /ljj
    

    
    	Having spent a few years in the halls of GMA, the field would do
    well to investigate a program where excess equipment is donated to
    schools!  Most engineers, after moving from 3-4 VTs to a multiwindowed
    VS discarded all the old VTs.  Now I suspect they have a VS, a DS, and
    probably an AS in their cubes (probably a PC or two, also).
    
    	Maybe we could become their charity by asking them to discard all
    that old 'junk' to the field so we're only 1-2 generations behind
    instead of 3-4  :^).
    
    	THEN we need to start demanding more information from the systems
    we _do_ have so that either the AGM or IM&T feels the heat to start
    delivering INFORMATION rather than just reports.  Tell your manager
    every type of information you need to be more effective and ask them
    what they will do to provide it.  I think the days of sales will be
    changing rapidly soon - we better be ready!
    

    re .2 and unmanaged capital . . .
    
    I agree with most of what you say except the following:
        
>    Without a professional staff to plan and manage computing resources,
>    we will always have a patchwork of feast/famine in the field.
    
    I **strongly** disagree with this part.  The last thing we need is
    another large bureaucracy to help us manage our computing resources.  
    
    We run a pure skunkworks operation here in our office.  This system is
    *all* workstations and X terminals.  We have 60+ users who now have
    access to DECwrite, DECpresent, and other DECwindows applications they
    would not otherwise have.  It's a winning situation all around, and we
    grew it gradually over the last couple years from nothing.  One person
    manages this whole thing part time.  I dread what would happen to us if
    some committee from New England or someplace tried to come up with some
    master computing plan for the whole country and forced us to follow it.
    
    People in local offices should take care of local issues.
    
    - Greg Scott
    

    
    re: -.1
    
    Your right...
    
    First of all, I don't advocate any "professional staff" to manage
    anything unless they add value. If a central computing support 
    organization adds needless overhead and provides no service, you're
    right - don't use them. 
    
    Before I worked for DEC, I managed engineering computing for a large
    company. Engineering management pleaded with me to take over their
    systems and workstations - because my group added value, was on 24 
    hour call, and eliminated all the headaches involved in planning for
    and providing computer services. I spent most of my time with 
    end users, trying to understand what they needed and then I went and
    got it. In four years we grew from 4 users to nearly 1000 users and
    were a multi-million $$ DEC account. 
    
    That's the kind of support organization I'd like to see in the field
    to support us!
    
    /ljj
    

    exactly! I'm teaching salesreps to use vaxstations!  They
    can be suprisingly adept at usng technology - of course they all 
    came from Burroughs a few years ago....

To get back to the topic of this note:

I was totally amazed and extremely proud upon entering the DECworld floor on 
monday morning (4/27). The atmosphere for learning and understanding our 
products, services and solutions that we created in the exhibition hall 
was something that I do not believe any customer could ignore.

However, after three days at DECworld, it became clear to me that this company 
has damn too many people. Most of the time I was at DECworld, there appeared 
to be many more DEC employees than customers. And I have never seen so many
people with Walkie Talkies in one place... were they really all needed?

I was excited about the guest speakers until I was removed from the line while 
accompanying my customer because Digital employees were denied access until 5 
minutes before the speaker was to go on. This was the Bill Gates speech. This 
was embarassing not only for me but for Digital. Those hardy Digital souls who
stood out in the brisk New England wind for 55 minutes were able to get in and
see the presentation while standing up (I was NOT one of them). I understand
the need to give customers priority, but I think this could have been
handled much better.

Regards,

Jim

    I'm curious to know if DECWORLD 92 is a "product" event, or if Digital
    Services are well presented and advertised.  Can anyone who visited
    enter his/her impressions of this ?
    
    I'm interested due to the focus of DUE92 last February in France.
    
    David - Digital Services (Europe)

    I thought DECworld 92 was a very well planned and customer beneficial
    event for my customers.  We only spent a day and a half there due to
    their time constraints but I was able to let them see and touch what we
    have been telling them about with WPS-PLUS and Postscript documents
    since the ACT's went away.
    
    Services were well represented and positioned, but we still have a ways
    to go to get the "traditional" DEC customer to believe that a "vendor"
    has anything but self interest when describing ourselves as
    consultants.
    
    Hats off to all the walkie-talkies and folks behaind the scenes who
    make this such a fabulous opportunity for our customers to see the real
    first class Digital Equipment Corporation.
    
    PS - Remember that a great many of the people on the floor were from
    our marketing partners - that is one of the greatest assets we have and
    DECworld 92 incorporates them well.

    "Great" is an understatement.  "Strategically Great" is more like it.

    I took the Deputy Superintendent and MIS Director of a school district
    here in Kern County.  They don't buy a great deal but they influence
    somewhere in the neighborhood of $5M a year (minimum).

    The school district is a new DEC customer but the MIS Director is only
    'quasi-DEC'.  The Deputy Superintendent, even after purchasing DEC
    hardware, continued to attend IBM functions .... DECworld was the
    *first* DEC function that he had ever attended ... and only after some
    gentle "coercing" from their DEC sales representative (me).

    After the third day (I think that I walked more at DECworld than I did
    in the USMC), a tour of the Quincy School, the 'sandbox' ... the Deputy
    Superintendent remarked: "Jerry, I've never seen IBM come anywhere
    NEAR this .. I'm convinced we really made the right decision for the
    future, and, I'll tell anyone that asks".

    Can we all say "bingo" in the key of 'c' ....

    Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh......

    Jerry
    
    PS - Can I expense a new pair of boots?  I got HOLES in mine as a result of
    so much walking!

I have to admit, I was extremely impressed with the whole DECWorld situtation...  
Yeah, there seemed to be a lot of DEC people, but then, the thing ran so 
smoothly I am hard pressed to complain...

Reminds me of a story...

   Was a guy standing in a field stomping on the ground very persistantly...
   another man came up, looked around, didn't see anything for miles around...
   asked him...  What are you doing that for?
   reply...  Keeping away elephants...
   response...  But there aren't any elephants here!
   reply...  See!  It's working!

So fine, given how smoothly the operation went, you may wonder why there where
so many DECCIES, but given the types of customers that attend and the fact that
this may be DECs only real marketing contact with some of them for the whole
year, Can we afford not to be on the conservative side?

We had set up side meetings with Engineering and Marketing folks for a variety
of important products (to us anyway)...  Customer went home very impressed...
We hope to close a consulting deal based on this very soon and following that
there should be some large product opportunities...

If our case is anywhere near typical, then DECWorld is worth it...

/mike

    My feeling is that the Sales People did a good job in getting the non
    installed base to DECworld. Our Group (IBM Interconnect) is doing a high
    level presentation each day on how Digital can integrate a customers
    computing environment where IBM is a major vendor.
    
    A huge proportion of the audience aren't even aware that Digital has
    any IBM Interconnect products! Stories of how integrating their
    environments can help them have gone over well. I've had people at the
    demo station seemingly anxious to write out purchase orders. I hope the
    level of interest shown on our stuff was reflected elsewhere (it seemed
    to be). More to the point I hope some of this interest turns into Q4
    business for Digital.
    
    Dave

    My customer was very interested in the DECtower storage cabinets, one
    of the folks in the Tour Area ( next to the Open Systems Area) told my
    customer that Digital was going to announce the DECtower cabinets and
    the 3 1/4 1 GB disks on May 13.  I can not find any information on
    this, did it happen.
                                                       
    Thanks,

They weren't announced.  Neat stuff eh?