Conference 7.286::digital

Greetings all,

lucky for you in the Notes community I have an opinion about this!

1. I would be pleased to work with a salesperson who puts lots of stuff of
dubious history on maintenance. If its stuff that belongs in a DEC computer
room it probably works and can be made to work again. To be fussy about the
stuff we "will" take on contract is to beg the third party maintenance 
people to put our f/s people out of buisness!

2. Cost! Don't give me any grief about what it costs to fix things! I have
worked on 8mm drives that the cost is $4000 for a replacement drive. Maybe
in someones wildest imaginations these things cost that much but not in the
real world... We have them in stock and get charged about $100.00 by 
someone to refurb them. I once had a 3rd party tape drive that we replaced
with a TU80 guess how much our cost center was charged? $6,000.00! Funny
money thats what we are making our buisness decisions on, we should stop
it. The other companys (you know the ones who hired the fe's that we layed
off lastt year around this time?) don't use funny money and under cut us 
and still make money. 

3. Ther is lots of money to be made in the field service buisness but the
tragedy is that it takes a great deal of honesty and hard work to make the
decisions that get that money. It isn't going to be made by using haughty
and old fashioned ideas of what we will do.

Your welcome,

Fred Mudgett

    As I recall - and I clearly do, we USED to require pre-inspection of
    any product we put under maintenance that had not been so before
    acceptance. Is that policy now disolved? 

    re. .0
    
    If your scenario is correct that is unfortunate.
    
    However, if anywhere our future is bright it is here -- in MCS. As a 
    Digital sales rep I have had the benefit of making many a system and
    service sale because our customer service engineers do what it takes
    to make our customers happy over and over again. And our customers 
    recognize it!
    
    Truth is we need to leverage this good reference business. If anything
    from what I have seen in the field, in the past,  we have not put enough 
    sales emphasis on going after new MCS business. This year we changed
    that and I think over time it will pay off.
    
    My only concern is that with our downsizing and our expansion to
    maintain everything and anything, that we are stretching our
    customer service engineers and CSC folks a bit thin, and stand risking our 
    excellent reputation in this business. Let hope we don't make this
    mistake.
    
    Curt

    	I, at least, agree with .0 .
    
    	- There is no accounting system to track the cost of labor
    associated with attempting to locate parts and the best price source.
    
    	- Knowing where to get low cost refurbished replacement parts does
    not scale well to the volume and variety of devices we are allegedly 
    able to support, so the funny money argument is largely bogus.
    
    	- Parts are one thing, documentation is another. Try fixing
    something without so much as an interconnect drawing.
    
    	- I challenge all the "this is good business" advocates to work a
    technical problem up close and personal with MCS. You cannot make a 
    hardware widget appear when needed by projecting revenue and justifying
    selling services with the expectation of leveraging sales. If it's
    broken, MCS owns it. Digital eats the cost with no tears because we 
    conformed to the business model and will make it right.
    
    	If I could get a sight unseen repair contract on an '85 Chevy I'd 
    know opportunity's knocking.
    
    Phil

    
    I agree with .1.  There is a bundle of money to be made in the service
    business.  Even more on 3rd party stuff because it isn't as good as
    ours.  Instead of crying about having to service something without
    documentation, do something about it.  When I was in the field I was
    sent on calls to fix things that I had never even heard of, let alone
    seen or knew anything about.  So this is not a new problem.
    
    If you have products to service and no documentation, make up a list
    of the products and send it to either the MCS business group, or the
    MCS Engineering group....or BOTH, and tell THEM what you NEED.
    
    In otherwords,
    
    
    		E S C A L A T E
    
    

.5> I agree with .1.  There is a bundle of money to be made in the service
.5> business.  Even more on 3rd party stuff because it isn't as good as
.5> ours.

Ummm... explain how we make more money on equipment that is of lower
quality?

Lee

    
    	re -1
    	Lower quality = lower MTBF = higher maintenance costs = higher
    	service contract prices = opportunity to sell more Digital stuff
    	to replace it.
    
    	re .0
    
    	I can't see how your group got roped into buying a pig in a poke.
    	When I was in field service, we did an audit of the stuff before
    	we decided whether/how much to charge to put it on contract. This
    	hasn't changed, at least for the group that services our equipment
    	here at PKO. So it seems that somebody on your side of the field
    	dropped the ball.
    
    	John
    

    unfortunately i have seen numerous instances such as that described in
    .0. it's gross incompetance that most of the time isn't any one
    individuals fault. it's the "system". we push and push people to the
    point they only act in their best short term interest. digital and the
    customer are much farther down on the prioity list. those that did this
    used to be in the minority by quite a bit. now they are EVERYWHERE.

    Re: .5-
    
    >In otherwords,
    
    
    >		E S C A L A T E
    
    
    	As if the person receiving the escalation has any more information
    when the thing is down. I'm a support engineer. My job is often to say
    what we need and why. It's nearly impossible to get the documentation
    you need since there is no requirement to get it, no funding to order
    it and no person to keep track of what we should have. The person that
    used to do this was TFSOd. _IF_ a FIP exists for a product, it is usually 
    outdated and the supporting group has been dissolved/realigned. Again,
    all the labor expended in these situations is unaccounted for.
    
    Phil
    of date or woefully 

Greetings once again,

A couple more thoughts.

1. If we don't service the stuff because we have a entire organization devoted
to doing nothing more than supporting the third party equiptment how can/will
the little third party maintenance companies do it? I've heard for years
how they undercut our prices, get the contracts and cause the customers nothing
but trouble. Well I know this is only from a front-line grunt who has no more
vision of the MVCS buisness than the customers who buy our service and renew
those contracts... but the reason most 3rd party maintenance companys started
in the first place was because DEC wouldn't take a system on maintenance if it
had any 3rd party equiptment on the system. Congratulate ourselves for inventing
a competitor. Those companies havn't gone out of buisness, they've grown! With
the tfsoing of the last year they've even gotten the added bonus of fse's with
relationships with customers. So in a word who's wrong around here the 3rd
party maintenance companys which can and do charge less, take anything the
customer has on maintenance and are growing in market share or us?

2. The thing people other than DEC seem to get (and many inside the MVCS) seem
to get is that selling service is a relationship thing. We've convinced our-
selves that any-darned-fool can replace a module so it doesn't matter who you
hire and send out on site to repair a 4000/60. The horriable truth is that 
the people who pay our saleries (you know customers who buy service contracts?)
don't really want to hear how difficult it is for us to fix the thing we said
we would fix. This is where the value of a steady relationship comes in, they've
bought our service and now we are going to stand behind it. If this means we
can't get the box to work we replace it with a DEC box that does thats what we
do. That's what I think customers expect from us, not reasons why it hurts to 
fix the box we took their money to fix.

3. Finally we had a MVS guy in our branch until a recent TFSO. I always wondered
what the heck he did to justify his time. He didn't fix any of the gear we
had on contract, he wouldn't go out on-site. He had some old-DEC job discription 
that sounded like poetry of "support the field service engineers with action
plans for multivendor solutions in a demention far from here and make the 
world a better place" or some such. Well what he did was a waste of time then
and makes me wonder what the value is of the MVS beauracy that exists in the 
company today. At the third party maintenance companys that we compete against
that MVS organization consists of...' yes we will maintain it for x dollars a 
month." Here it seems to be "yes provided that we can make oceans of profit
to cover layers of overhead that have accumulated to provide support for each
other and jobs for many and there be no exposure of risk to DEC." 

In a word we ought to be the company that can't say no to opportunity. 

Fred 

    I work in MCS, and per the base note, I see some things that sound like
    they were not done.
    
    When I get a lead on a MVS opportunity, the first thing I do is call
    the MVS group and give them descriptions, and region.  They tell me if
    we support it, give me Digital part number, and cost.  Then I notify 
    field service to do a pre contract inspection.
    
    When we send the quote out the door, we put a clause in the quote,
    stating that this quote is not valid until the equipment has passed
    a pre contract inspection.
    
    No operation works perfectly all the time.  I am sure I would like to
    hear from the MCS sales rep with all the facts prior to basing a
    decision.
    
    In reference to service delivery not being a concern of the MCS sales
    rep, DAMN straight it's not a concern.  We are driven on sales.  Dick
    Sellers, who is the VP of HPS, stated at the MCS sales meeting in July,
    that if WE sell it, HIS group will deliver.  Bottom line.
    
    If I get a go ahead from the MVS group for quoting, it's being quoted.
    If there is a flaw in the system, it's a Digital flaw, not a MCS sales
    rep flaw.  Corporate has made commitments to MCS, and if for some
    reason this is not happening, then someone should notify corporate!
    
    MCS motto: Deliver on the promise!
    
    Bob
    

    
    
    The writing is on the wall, and has been for some time now.  Digital
    MCS has aprox. 65-70% of the market share for the service of Digital
    hardware.  Digital MCS has aprox. 5-10% of the market share for the
    service of non Digital hardware.  The total market for non Digital
    hardware is naturally considerably bigger than the total market for
    Digital hardware.  The services revenue for Digital hardware based on
    price per unit will continue to decline.  We have been told in no
    uncertain terms, "If we do not grow the third party business
    continually, we will slowly put ourselves out of a job.".  Are there
    problems with the people selling services on little known and broken
    equipment?  Yes of course.  Are there going to have to be improvements
    in our process's?  Yes of course.  Will we have to increase our
    internal communications and partenerships?  Yes of course.
    
    Jon Aller

    RE: .9
    
    The escalation I spoke of is not to get a better support person.  I
    said make a list of the products and what you need to service them
    and escalate to either the MCS business group, the MCS Engineering
    group, or BOTH.  These groups will not give you better technical help,
    but they are the ones that need to know that you are being asked to
    service products and have no documentation, training, etc., etc., and
    therefore cannot properly service the products.  This makes no
    difference if the products are non-Digital or Digital.  If you have
    products to service, then you need the proper "tools" to do the job,
    PERIOD.  If the ONLY way to get it is to escalate, then by all means,
    
    
    		   ****	E S C A L A T E  ****
    
    The MCS Engineering and Business peoples job depends on making Digital
    services "best-in-class".  They cannot do this if they do not know what
    the problems are.  Help them out, tell THEM what you need.
    
     

    BTW, MCS sales base pay was reduced by 30%, not 20%.

From:	NAME: John Rando @OGO               
	FUNC: MULTIVENDOR CUSTOMER SERVICES   
	TEL: 276-8367                         <RANDO.JOHN AT A1 at STOWOA at OGO>
To:     See Below



                  I N T E R O F F I C E   M E M O R A N D U M

                                        Date:     21-Sep-1993 01:20pm EDT
                                        From:     Nicholas Houpis @MLO
                                                  HOUPIS.NICHOLAS AT A1 at EMASA2 at MLO
                                        Dept:     Corporate Communications
                                        Tel No:   223-

TO: See Below
 
Subject: I: Positive Report in Service News                                     

    Following is a very positive report on page 1 of September's "Service 
    News", assessing the impact of downsizing on Digital's and IBM's 
    service delivery.  There's been concern among industry influencers 
    that service levels will suffer with reduced resources and declining 
    morale.  This article helps dispel this concern, with help from a 
    couple of key industry analysts -- Carter Lusher of Gartner Group and 
    Mike Melenovsky of IDC.
    
    Service News is a monthly publication for the "computer service and 
    support" industry.  It has a circulation of some 45,000.
    
    This is the entire article (reprinted here without permission).  Hope 
    you find this of value.
    
    Regards,
    Nick

    
    Service News
    September 1993
    
                    CUTBACKS HAVEN'T HURT DEC/IBM SERVICE
       Users report layoffs haven't reduced quality or availability of
                                   support
    
                              By Kevin Fogarty
    
    ARMONK, NY and MARLBOROUGH, MA -- Despite massive losses and layoffs, 
    users say the service they get from computer giants IBM Corp. and 
    Digital Equipment Corp. is as good as ever, and sometimes less 
    expensive.  Analysts say service is too important a source of revenue 
    for either financially troubled company to let it deteriorate.
    
    IBM's service delivery has been less affected than Digital's, 
    possibly because Bib Blue's downsizing efforts have trailed those of 
    Digital.  After shedding nearly 20,000 jobs, Digital's CEO Robert 
    Palmer says he hopes the present company-wide headcount of  94,200 
    will remain stable, but has said in the past that 85,000 to 90,000 
    was a reasonable size for the company.  Services, he says, are a 
    vital part of the company's operations.  "Our service organization, 
    particularly Multivendor Customer Services, has been the standout 
    organization for Digital.  It's a very important part of our 
    business," Palmer says, adding that he does not expect any major 
    layoffs in the division during the next year.
    
    New IBM CEO Louis Gerstner, Jr. is hoping his company can take its 
    medicine in one gulp by shedding as many as 85,000 jobs during this 
    fiscal year.  The company posted an $8.04-billion charge for layoffs 
    and plant closings.  
    
    The biggest changes in support from the two companies have been in 
    pricing, which has dropped in some cases, and has been unbundled from 
    product prices, says Carter Lusher, analyst with the Gartner Group in 
    Stamford, CT> 
    
    Gerald Jacquot, director of data-center services for pharmaceutical 
    company Rhone-Poulec Rorer Inc. in Collegeville, PA has seen his 
    Digital service costs dip by about five percent, and his IBM 
    hardware-maintenance bill drop about 10 percent, at least partially 
    because IBM is now selling refurbished spare parts cheaper than new 
    ones.  "But with IBM, the quality control is so good, there's no 
    difference in quality between refurbished and new," Jacquot says.
    
    Despite the radical downsizing, both companies have managed to spare 
    most of their field-service forces, although some users are getting 
    less sales support than they once had.
    
    Maithrey Manoharan, director of the computer center at the University 
    of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, OK, says she has noticed absolutely no 
    change in the amount or quality of service she gets for the IBM and 
    Digital equipment in her data center.
    
    However, the Digital sales people that used to crowd around to help 
    her plan upgrades "are spread so thin, we can't get the information 
    we need," she says.
    
    Robert Kimbro, director of information systems, agrees that  
    Digital's sales force is thinner than it used to be, but "that 
    doesn't bother us, we don't need a salesman.  We know what we need to 
    buy.  We don't have any problem getting service," Kimbro says.
    
    Digital is focusing its sales efforts on Fortune 500 companies, so it 
    makes sense that smaller accounts would have less access to sales 
    help, says Michael Melenovsky, analyst with market-research firm 
    International Data Corp. in Framingham, MA.  If any customers see 
    their service level decline, it will be some medium-sized and smaller 
    accounts, Melenovsky says.
    
    But Harlen Seeliger, who as manager of information systems at Samedan 
    Oil Corp. in Ardmore, OK describes himself as one of those mid-sized 
    customers, says service for his IBM/Digital shop is as good as ever.
    
    "We're in kind of a remote location, too; 100 miles from Dallas, 100 
    miles from Oklahoma city," he says.  "But [the downsizing] hasn't 
    affected our service, and I haven't heard of anybody in this area 
    with problems on the service side."
    
    Analysts say that's not surprising, considering how profitable the 
    service divisions are for both companies.
    
    "It would be very easy to assume that with all the turmoil going on 
    with both organizations, that there could be pockets of problems at 
    local offices, but I don't see anything in their downsizing or their 
    changing business models that has adversely affected service and 
    support," says Lusher.  "Both IBM and Digital are making service a 
    profit center, so they're not going to starve [the services 
    divisions] for resources.  In fact, Digital has been putting more 
    resources into service."
    
    Digital's sales effort, however, is "not the aggressive approach they 
    need in these times," says Jacquot, whose company manufactures 
    Maalox antacid.
    
    IBM's reorganization also has resulted in a more focused sales 
    approach from its subsidiaries, including service groups.  "They're 
    very aggressive at selling services, disaster recovery, consulting," 
    says Jacquot.  "Where before they were fat, dumb, and happy, now 
    they're really trying to earn your business."
    
                                    # # #
    
    
    

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