Conference 7.286::digital

    Because by Digital's definition, marketing is helping sales service
    demand for the products engineered and manufactured by the corporation.
    
    Ask for a close look at any "marketing plan". You will see well thought
    out product strategies, pricing schemes, sales support and sales
    funding plans and cost structures.
    
    What you won't see is a strategic view of what markets we can be
    successful in, what the near and long term needs are in those markets,
    and how we are going to establish ourselves in a leadership position
    and then do all the above.
    
    What do I know..........
    

    I started with Digital 2 years ago in the marketing development
    program.  The MDP was designed to transform the nations top college
    graduates into corporate marketing executives.  They cut the program!
    
    When I entered the company I knew that Digital was a poor marketing
    company - Engineering Driven.
    
    Today things have not changed much.
    This announcement proves it.
    
    This is how marketing should work:
    
    1. Marketers should know the market so well that they can explain to
    engineering what the customer will want in the future.
    - Supporting sales should be one of the many marketing tasks.
    - Demand creation should be another
    - pricing, distribution etc...
    
    2. Sales should be part of marketing, they should have to worry about
    selling and THAT IS IT!  Presently they spend there time dealing with
    the Digital garbage. It is not their fault. 
    
    The customer value chain is working to maximize a sales person's time
    in front of customers.
     
                          

RE: .2

I agreed with every word you said, until the last sentence:
    
>    The customer value chain is working to maximize a sales person's time
>    in front of customers.
     
Pardon my ignorance, but either I missed the :-) on that, or I am totally
out of touch.

From my point of view (Sales Support, dealing with Sales Reps and Sales
Managers on a daily basis), the Customer Value Chain is vaporware, hype,
and completely invisible from a field standpoint.  I have seen major
promotions and puff-pieces of it in Digital publications, but I have not
seen any modification of any of the tools or procedures we use in the 
field attributed to the CVC.  In fact, if the changes that we have seen
in the field in the last few months (requiring VP approval for ROT/CON,
requiring VP approval to buy PC software for the notebook PCs, inability
to order literature in the quantities we need, and the termination of all
of the administrative and support people) are part of CVC, then I cannot
say it is "working to maximize a sales person's time in front of customers".
On the contrary, it is doing exactly the opposite.

Can you point out some positive effects of the CVC?  I want to learn about
positive things happening in this company, and am very interested in any
change that will allow me to spend more time with the customer.

-- Ken Moreau

      I can't point out any positive effects of the CVC. There is a
    newsletter which has appeared (cheaply printed on grotty paper, just as
    well since almost every copy here goes in the bin without being read),
    and been distributed to everyone. I happened to read some of the most
    recent issue we've seen (June 6th - arrived two weeks later, but this
    is the UK).
    
      The whole back page is taken up with two stories of sales successes,
    one to the US Navy and one to the US Post Office. There is a good deal
    of praise of the Digital employees who made these succeses possible by
    'changing the way Digital works'. Ten out of ten to those people for
    satisfying the customers and winning the sales. But as reading the
    articles makes perfectly clear, the sad truth is that nothing at all
    was actually CHANGED. What happened in both cases was that
    knowledgeable and experienced Digits worked hard to meet the customer's
    needs *DESPITE* the way Digital works. Some quotes that may help to
    make this clearer:
    
    '... Long was intimately familiar with the key internal processes that
    could be accelerated in such a situation.
      When she became aware that the Navy's purchase order would be
    recieved at a time that would not normally enable Digital to provide an
    acceptable delivery,...."
    
    ' Less than two weeks after receiving the purchase order, Digital
    delivered a complete and correctly configured Alpha AXP system to
    NAVCOMTELSTA's customer. This was a full _SIX WEEKS_ (my emphasis -
    Ken) earlier than the delivery time Digital had originally quoted.'
    
    '... Digital Manufacturing would be unable to ship even one of the
    seven workstations needed for the pilot by the required date of
    delivery.
      When told of the situation, Electrocom began to reconsider using
    Alpha AXP workstations - and the problem quickly intensified. "An
    Electrocom VP told me that Hewlett Packard was willing to deliver 10 of
    its workstations within the next ten days,".. '           
                                                                      
      As I said, ten out of ten to the employees that did the work; minus
    several thousand to Digital for having such balky, slow and
    beuraucratic systems as to make it necessary for them to go to so much
    trouble to satisfy the customers. What couldn't those people do if
    the corporation was really re-engineered, rather than just down-sized?
    But the whole tone of the articles was basically self-congratulatory so
    far as Digital was concerned, whereas it should (IMO) have been severely
    critical. 
    
    Ken

      Forgot to add in the last reply, there is a CVC Notes conference as
    well, on MEMIT::CUSTOMER_VALUE_CHAIN, press <KP7> if you want to add it
    to your notebook.
    
      Don't worry about it taking up too much of your time to read it
    though, the recent rate of new replies seems to be about one per month.
    8*| 
    
    Ken

  Basically, you are looking for results too early. CVC is an immense project,
so give it some time, assuming the funders will as well :-)

>>From my point of view (Sales Support, dealing with Sales Reps and Sales
>>Managers on a daily basis), the Customer Value Chain is vaporware, hype,
>>and completely invisible from a field standpoint.  

It's too bad that CVC hasn't been more clearly explained to the people 
that stand to benefit from it. CVC is indeed a business process 
re-engineering effort whose results, if attained, should be very visible to 
the Sales and Marketing folks. 

>>Can you point out some positive effects of the CVC?  I want to learn about
>>positive things happening in this company, and am very interested in any
>>change that will allow me to spend more time with the customer.

For example, in today's process, the salesman collects customers' needs and 
then brings those needs to the office where information, quotation, and 
proposals are generated for subsequent delivery to the customer. CVC could
provide Sales with a (maybe PC-based) tool to assist in configuration and 
quotation proposals in a mobile environment which eliminates the salesman's 
need to return to the office. The salesman spends more time with the customer 
and the customer can interactively work with the saleman to develop a solution.

CVC could revamp DMO by adding Compuserver, Prestel, Transpac, Internet etc. 
connections and tools to better allow customers to do direct ordering for
non-complex or replacement ordering. This gives the saleman more time with
the larger accounts without forgetting our smaller accounts.

CVC is meant to strip infrastructure and logistics costs and eliminate
duplicate IS systems without reducing IS capability and even adding to it. 
For example, there are many country-developed and independent systems that 
all have the same goals of order-tracking, pricing, etc. Merging these 
systems would eliminate confusion, and reduce support and system development
costs.

These are but some of the areas that CVC may be investigating. Software 
development is real and ongoing. The ideas seem to be good, real problems
identified, real solutions being architected BUT you will need to wait to
see any results.

The question mark behind this or any project of this sort, is that it is highly
politically charged, and groups and individuals are probably competing and 
lobbying for survival and control. Hopefully the goals won't be radically
modified as this, plus the executive shuffle at the top, is going on.

    I came from a company that thought the "new system" was "the answer".
    Enormous efforts/resources went into developing, implementing, and
    supporting the "new system".  Well, after all was said and done, the
    company "faltered" and they wound up "pulling out the new system" (it
    was too costly to run in terms of hardware/network/IM&T costs) and they
    went back-to-basics (central distribution, manual process/phone calls).  
    
    I'm not suggesting that we are on the same course, or that we will have
    the same fate, but let's not think that any system (no matter how
    eloquent the design) is "the answer".  
    
    One other thought: in our earnest quest to "get the new system" we
    often decide to "freeze" our current platform (e.g., no enhancements).
    It's kinda like saying "I know I'm buying a new car in three years so
    why would I want to put any money into keeping this thing on the road".
    Well, before you know it, three years have passed and you can't afford 
    the new car.  So, you're left with a car which is "unable to compete
    in the marketplace".
    
    
    
    
     
    
    

>>      <<< Note 3216.6 by BALZAC::62552::SIE ""Cheryl Bulmer, IM&T ASG"" >>>
>>                                  -< RE: .3 >-


 >> Basically, you are looking for results too early. CVC is an immense project,
>>so give it some time, assuming the funders will as well :-)
.
.
>>re-engineering effort whose results, if attained, should be very visible to 
>>the Sales and Marketing folks. 
.
.
>> CVC could provide Sales with a (maybe PC-based) tool to assist in 
.
.
>>CVC could revamp DMO by adding Compuserver, Prestel, Transpac, Internet etc. 
.
.
>>CVC is meant to strip infrastructure and logistics costs and eliminate


"If attained"; "CVC could"; "assuming the funders"; "CVC is meant".....

I work in the field as a sales rep, and I recognize vaporware and hype when I 
see it.  CVC has done NOTHING for us in the many months (and how many man years)
expended on it.  As stated before, we're actually worse off now (as respects
ease of business processes) than two years ago. 

One of the keys to a successful BPR effort is to deploy some improvement in the
area being "re-engineered" so as to keep people committed to the overall effort.
So far, NOTHING has been deployed to help us in the field.

I am constantly amazed at DEC's arrogance.  We are the first to tell our 
customers how to fix THEIR business, but we are a Harvard Business Review case
study of prehistoric business practices.

Rev

    Here's what the CVC needs to fix
    
    When will I as a Sales and Marketing professional be able to make a
    committment to a customer or business partner, and have any confidence
    whatsoever that my company will deliver?
    
    
    When will:
    
    I be able to launch a direct mail campaign without it being designed
    and approved by individuals who have no knowledge of my market.
    
    When will I be able to design advertising content to actually address 
    what my customers need to know, instead of being told by people who
    rarely talk to customers (who actually buy) that it interferes with the
    corporate image?
    
    When will I not be second guessed by finance and dragged over hot
    coals on every spending decision?
    
    When will I be able to have any sort of acurate reporting on how much
    I'm selling and where?
    
    When will I ever be able to guess within a month or so when my customer
    will recieve the products they ordered?
    
    When will we have an engineering and product management organization
    which is not handcuffed  by procedures and processes that  send our
    time to market beyond the realm of competitiveness?
    
    When will the people ACCOUNTABLE for succes actually have AUTHORITY to
    make decisions to achieve that success?
    
    When will I not have to fill out a form to go to the bathroom?
    
    
    Excuse these rambling from a person who learned at business school that
    everything that Digital does today, is exactly what not to do!
    
    How will the CVC effect these processes which every day prevent me from 
    being effective?
    
    Jeff
                    

RE: .8

I appreciate your points, but that was a little harsh to a fellow Digit who
is struggling through the same kinds of pain we are dealing with.

RE: .6

>It's too bad that CVC hasn't been more clearly explained to the people 
>that stand to benefit from it. 

That statement is 100% accurate.  From my point of view, CVC has **NOT**
been explained at all, never mind clearly.  I have read some of the articles
on it, but I saw nothing in them which would benefit me in any way.  No, I
will go further than that: I saw nothing in them that related to my job in
any way.  And if the point of CVC is to assist Sales in doing their jobs,
then CVC would directly assist me in doing mine (Sales Support).  But I do
not perceive anything in the articles I have read about CVC that would affect 
me and my job in any way.  I grant you that I may have missed it: please 
point out specific sections that I may have mis-understood.

>For example, in today's process, the salesman collects customers' needs and 
>then brings those needs to the office where information, quotation, and 
>proposals are generated for subsequent delivery to the customer. CVC could
>provide Sales with a (maybe PC-based) tool to assist in configuration and 
>quotation proposals in a mobile environment which eliminates the salesman's 
>need to return to the office. The salesman spends more time with the customer 
>and the customer can interactively work with the saleman to develop a solution.

Yesterday I was at the customer site, as I am every day, often for the full
day.  A customer came up to me to request information about some incremental
disk storage.  I queried the requirements, and asked if I could borrow a
desk with a phone.  I then used the SOC to configure the disks, called
1-800-DEC-SALE to confirm the cables I would need, and dialed into AQS with
my notebook PC using Reflections IV (I can't stand KEATERM).  I did the quote,
down-loaded the Postscript file to my PC, and used a Pathworks PC to print
the file to an LPS20.  Elapsed time: less than 30 minutes.  Total sale: $35K.

I do this **ALL THE TIME**.  Many people I know in the field do this kind of 
thing.  Further, I can't count the number of times I have done this with
white papers, SPDs, and info sheets.  And we have everything we need (besides
some training) in the field *right now*! 

2 years ago I would not have been able to do that, and Digital supplied a 
notebook PC to help me.  It did.  Can you specifically state what tools CVC 
will supply that will further improve on the above process?  

>CVC is meant to strip infrastructure and logistics costs and eliminate
>duplicate IS systems without reducing IS capability and even adding to it. 

I don't understand that sentence.  Can you point out specific IS systems
that you will eliminate?  Can you point out specific processes that you will
remove?  Can you point out specific tasks that we perform today that we will
not need to perform in the future?

-- Ken Moreau

>>I appreciate your points, but that was a little harsh to a fellow Digit who
>>is struggling through the same kinds of pain we are dealing with.

Truth sometimes hurts.  If DEC marketed our products and services as well
as this CVC has been hyped internally, we may not be in this mess.

CVC is another example of DEC's senior management telling themselves how well
they're doing while we grunts pull the increasing load.

FWIW, CVC may be just a diversion while DEC whittles away the products and
services not considered "core", and reduces the company to something that can
survive with the old systems.  There may not even be a big enough field force
left to warrent new systems.

Just my opinion.

Rev

  RE: .8

  Everything you attacked me on is true if you don't read between the lines.

  RE: .10

>Yesterday I was at the customer site, as I am every day, often for the full
>day.  A customer came up to me to request information about some incremental
>disk storage.  I queried the requirements, and asked if I could borrow a
>desk with a phone.  I then used the SOC to configure the disks, called
>1-800-DEC-SALE to confirm the cables I would need, and dialed into AQS with
>my notebook PC using Reflections IV (I can't stand KEATERM).  I did the quote,
>down-loaded the Postscript file to my PC, and used a Pathworks PC to print
>the file to an LPS20.  Elapsed time: less than 30 minutes.  Total sale: $35K.

 Bravo! No sarcasm here; that's excellent that you clinched your obligation
AND probably impressed your client with your technical know-how in doing so.
However, wouldn't it even be better if you had:

	1) an electronic SOC on your PC
	2) other catalogs based on market segment, customer profile, etc.
	3) an on-line configurator to avoid the call to 1-800-DEC-SALE
	4) an automatic link to AQS to avoid your second call
	5) a choice of snazzy templates to produce quotations and proposals
	6) your customer's profile allowing you to offer quantity or DBA
	   discounts to your customer.
	
  Your sale was obviously to an installed base customer. Imagine trying to
do what you did to on a broader scale: proposing a VAX/PC/LAN Manager
client/server solution to a MAC/IBM based customer. Could you have correctly 
choosen and configured everything with just your SOC and 1-800-DEC-SALES? You 
probably would've needed pre-sales support. Some pre-sales support functions 
(I can feel the attack already) can be partially packaged onto a PC in the 
same way that the SOC uses a step-by-step hardware verification method. CVC 
could be investigating that possibility.

   Some IM&T people had the impression that all the technical steps you did
(configuring your modem, using Reflections IV or KEATERM, terminal 
emulation to AQS, Kermiting (or whatever) your quote, etc) required too much
technical know-how to be widely accepted by the sales-force. (And if you're
the Ken Moreau I knew from Spitbrook, you're WICKED technical!) If that's false,
then maybe we do have a sufficient on-customer-site-quoting capability now.

>I don't understand that sentence.  Can you point out specific IS systems
>that you will eliminate?  Can you point out specific processes that you will
>remove?

   You already picked out a great example: AQS. Do you know how many different
(read "noncompatible) AQS systems exist in this company (all called "AQS" 
incidentally)? One is enough...

>Can you point out specific tasks that we perform today that we will
>not need to perform in the future?

  Yes, it could be possible that you:

  1) no longer have bite your fingernails as you track order delivery; CVC
     could redesign the order-tracking process to make it predictable and
     accurate.

  2) no longer have to sell your French client a French keyboard PC from
     Digital Switzerland because the pricing rules in that country are
     advantageous to your own country's.

  3) don't have to read about the Logistics guy who committed suicide trying
     to cram all variations of warranty into the one-character allotted to him
     in the part numbers.
   
:-)

From an IM&T historical perspective, the trouble with these "redesign the
universe" projects is that:
	1. they start with great fanfare but often never get implemented when
		their 1-2 year schedule is up (so you wonder if they're not at
		least partly a way of providing an additional year or so of
		career longevity for the various architects, program managers,
		project managers, etc., that are initially involved)
	2. they are usually justified as obsoleting existing systems, so no
		incremental improvements get made to those systems, even when
		those changes might offer more bang for the buck
	3. but they themselves are often obsoleted midway by changing business
		conditions and cancelled or scaled way back before they ever
		get rolled out
	4. there's a focus on the hottest new technology (i suppose it will be
		wireless IP for PCs and Mosaic this time), especially for the
		front end, that often obscures the need to fix real business
		process problems on the back end systems
It remains to be seen if CVC will fare better than previous efforts.  But i
think whenever a project like this gets started, a "SWAT team" should be started
up in parallel to do inelegant "quick & dirty" fixes to the most egregious
problems that plague the existing systems.  Call it insurance.
								- paul

    Someone is under the mistaken impression that the trick to sales is to
    correctly quote and price our products.  It's not.  
    
    To effectively market our capabilities, refer to the previous note -
    (a few notes back, asking the questions...) how do we quickly and 
    effectively produce materials that will help us convince customers to buy. 
    Target mailings, advertising, demos, videos,...
    
    Then, how do we effectively structure and sell a deal that is not
    simple.  Quickly quoting a standard product really is a no-brainer, as
    described in .10.
    
    Then, how do we make commitments and deliver product into the hands of
    our customers.
    
    I guess that if some sales people had been involved in this CVC effort
    these questions would surface.

>  Someone is under the mistaken impression that the trick to sales is to
>  correctly quote and price our products.  It's not.  
 
Okay, true enough. Let's see what some of the points in .9 were:

> When will I as a Sales and Marketing professional be able to make a
> committment to a customer or business partner, and have any confidence
> whatsoever that my company will deliver?

This is of utmost importance to CVC; failing this is failing the CVC initiative.

> I be able to launch a direct mail campaign without it being designed
> and approved by individuals who have no knowledge of my market.
    
I didn't know U.S. Sales was prevented from this. I believe in Europe, sales
can do this and even has a PC tool to help: POINT.

>    When will I be able to design advertising content to actually address 

You must be joking. Can you imagine every saleman designing their own
advertising content? I believe that's what you do in your "pitch". If a
product is not being correctly placed, that is the product manager's
responsibility, not CVC's.
    
>    When will I not be second guessed by finance and dragged over hot
>    coals on every spending decision?
    
I think this one's obvious. Digital must control ALL spending given the
current financial state.

All the rest of your points are top-level priority problem for CVC to address.
Again, failing them would be a failure of CVC itself.

>    When will I be able to have any sort of acurate reporting on how much
>    I'm selling and where?
    
>    When will I ever be able to guess within a month or so when my customer
>    will recieve the products they ordered?
    
>    When will we have an engineering and product management organization
>    which is not handcuffed  by procedures and processes that  send our
>    time to market beyond the realm of competitiveness?
    
>    When will I not have to fill out a form to go to the bathroom?

   When they get the badgereaders in place.    
    
:-)

RE: .12

Cheryl Bulmer, aka Cheryl Wiecek, used to work in TLE (VAX FORTRAN)?  Yes, I
worked on VAX DEBUG in the 1985-1990 timeframe.  Wow, small world!

The point made .14 (I think) about correctly quoting the right parts being
only a small part of the sale is exactly correct, and I think you addressed
his points adequately.

>However, wouldn't it even be better if you had:
>
>	1) an electronic SOC on your PC
>	2) other catalogs based on market segment, customer profile, etc.

One thing we have to be careful of is to not use the technology where it is
not appropriate.  To me, the paper copy of the SOC and the price lists are
fine.  (I wish we would settle on a naming scheme for our software so that
I can find something more easily, but that is another issue).  They are
always available, since my car trunk can easily hold multiple copies of
them.  They can be given to customers so that the more technical customers
can do a lot of this themselves (and many customers like doing that).  And
I can put notes in them to either correct errors or scribble in the latest
part numbers which came out since the book was printed.

>	3) an on-line configurator to avoid the call to 1-800-DEC-SALE

We had something like that for the AXP 2100 (Sable).  It was fantastic: it
drew pictures of an empty Sable, you then specified things like "20GB disk,
2 Ethernets, 128MB memory, 2 processors" and the correct parts moved into
the correct slots, including cabling, extra power supplies, everything.  It
is incredible, and perfect for use by Sales and Sales Support.  It also 
blows customers away: it is a fantastic demo.

The funding for the tool was cut last week :-(.  Can CVC help out here?

>	4) an automatic link to AQS to avoid your second call

I don't understand how "an automatic link" is different than dialing up AQS.
(But then, maybe I am too 'wicked technical' to understand this :-))

>	5) a choice of snazzy templates to produce quotations and proposals
>	6) your customer's profile allowing you to offer quantity or DBA
>	   discounts to your customer.

AQS already gives me #6.  My customers DBA and everything else is in there.
	
>  Your sale was obviously to an installed base customer. Imagine trying to
>do what you did to on a broader scale: 

You are correct: this was an incremental sale to an installed base customer.
No extended sales campaign was needed, no competition was involved, and no
business issues needed to be overcome.  But keep in mind that Digital is
moving in this direction: I understand that we will focus on the "top 500"
accounts, and give the rest to VARs and such.  Therefore, this will be a
fairly common scenario in the future.  But here I will start to echo some
of the points raised in the other replies: a broader scale sales effort
automatically means that more of Digital needs to get involved.  Marketing
has to create an awareness of Digital in the customers mind, Sales has to
be able to make the sales calls, Support has to have the information needed
to answer the questions, Services has to be able to support the solution,
Engineering has to have the products ready (and here we are back to Marketing
knowing which products need to be built before we need to deliver them),
Manufacturing has to be able to build it, Finance and Legal have to be able 
to structure the business arrangements so we make money, Consulting has to 
have the people to implement it, etc.  (If I have left anyone out, I apologize. 
You get the idea).

My point is that this kind of thing will *never* be able to be done in front
of the customer on a PC.  If it is an off-the-shelf solution (like I had),
then we can quickly quote and deliver it.  But if it is *at all* complex,
the other parts of Digital *must* be involved so we don't sell something
that we can't deliver.

>You probably would've needed pre-sales support. Some pre-sales support 
>functions (I can feel the attack already) can be partially packaged onto a 
>PC in the same way that the SOC uses a step-by-step hardware verification 
>method. CVC could be investigating that possibility.

Well, being "pre-sales support" myself, I don't feel the need to attack you
for that: I agree with you.  The Sable configurator I mentioned earlier is 
a perfect example of what can be done.  I wish I had it available for every
product we sold: it would allow me to spend more time on the high-level
stuff, and would free up the people at 1-800-DEC-SALE to answer the more
high-level questions rather than my stupid one on cables.

But you said "could be investigating" rather than "are investigating".  That
scares me.

>   Some IM&T people had the impression that all the technical steps you did
>(configuring your modem, using Reflections IV or KEATERM, terminal 
>emulation to AQS, Kermiting (or whatever) your quote, etc) required too much
>technical know-how to be widely accepted by the sales-force. 

No, I agree that with the current toolset what I did was non-trivial.  But
with something like Mobilizer I think it could be made easier.  How about
the following:

An 800 number which can be called by any Sales Rep or Sales Support person.
You plug a phone line into your PC, and push a button in KEATERM.  This 
kicks off a macro which dials up the 800 number which gets you into an AQS
server.  The user is prompted for a USERNAME and PASSWORD, which are the same
ones (s)he uses back at the office for AQS.  The PC thinks for a minute and
finally presents the user with the AQS screen; again the same one (s)he sees
back at the office.  They enter the quote, and one of the print options is
"Download".  They wait a minute or so, and now the quote is on their PC, ready 
for printing.  Or another print option could be "FAX", where they enter the
customers FAX number, and the AQS server automatically FAXes the quote right
then and there.  (And don't talk about the FAX option there now: to use that
you have to be "registered" through some arcane process that no one understands,
and as such the functionality is unusable).

The point is that to the user, they simply connected a phone line, pushed a
button in KEATERM, and then specified a different print option.  *EVERYTHING*
else is exactly the way it looks back at the office.  And of course, if you
improve AQS back at the office, then the AQS server would match it perfectly.

RE: .15

>    When will I be able to design advertising content to actually address 
>
>You must be joking. Can you imagine every saleman designing their own
>advertising content? I believe that's what you do in your "pitch". 

So if we are trusted to do it in a pitch, why can't we do it in a direct
mail campaign which would multiply our effectiveness 100x?  Sorry, Cheryl,
but that comment smacks of the corporate arrogance mentioned earlier.
    

Cheryl, I have great respect for your abilities and dedication to getting
the job done correctly.  I believe you will do the same fine job in IM&T
that you did in TLE.  So take this next comment as constructive feedback
and not as an attack:  It should be obvious from the responses here that
the CVC is *not* viewed as a success by large parts of the field.  It is
viewed as simply another massive project by corporate which has no relevance
to us in the field, which will someday be superseded by another massive
project by corporate which has no relevance to us in the field, which will 
someday be superseded...

Your goals are laudable, your aims correct.  But your marketing of the project
is on a par with Digital marketing in general: ineffective.

>Again, failing them would be a failure of CVC itself.

Please tell us what the success criterion are for CVC, and your plans to 
achieve that success.  

Please tell us *SPECIFICALLY* what you plan to do.  Which processes are 
going to be eliminated?  Is it a goal of CVC to make it easier to get Sales,
Services, Consulting, Finance and Legal together to get a complex solution to 
the customer more quickly?  Is it a goal of CVC to help out our Marketing 
efforts?  If so, tell us *SPECIFICALLY* how, and if not, tell us *SPECIFICALLY* 
what your goals are.  But if the word "infrastructure" appears anywhere in your
explanation, you are not addressing our concerns.  Thanks.

-- Ken Moreau

    RE: .13
    
    I totally agree with your SWAT TEAM approach!  
    
    It works!

   >Cheryl Bulmer, aka Cheryl Wiecek...
   
   	Different Cheryls -- Ms. Bulmer has blonde hair, Ms. Wiecek
   	has brown.  Both, however, worked for VMS Engineering.
   
   					andrew	

    re. Sable configurator -
    
    I have a friend who is contracted to Compaq to write the same thing for
    them with their new super server rack mount systems.
    
    He also has mentioned that Compaq is going to build several windows
    packages for sizing, selecting etc, that will be sent out to all the
    dealers to let customers use.
    
    Glenn Sparks

    
    
    
    re: .-1, -2, -3, and more....
    
    This is a really interesting conversation, folks, but not the reason I
    started this topic.  I meant to discuss the lack of true direction and
    educated, professional marketing people in VP Marketing, Marketing
    Manager and Marketing Specialist positions in this company.  How much
    longer can we go on thinking that good product support and well-written
    spec's are an effective method of getting the product into the minds
    and offices of the customer -- installed base or otherwise?
    
    Marketing, to me, means programs, propaganda, advertising, usable sales
    techniques, competitive information, and other tools (yes, the Sable
    configurator is an excellent Marketing tool, as well as a quoting
    tool!).  Obviously, it means something different to Digital...
    
    m.
    
    M.

    re: .16
    
    >>> (I wish we would settle on a naming scheme for our software so that
    >>> I can find something more easily, but that is another issue). 
    
    But this is exactly the point.  Ninety percent of the complaints from
    sales and field support people aren't about their jobs per se, or the
    contortions they have to go through to do it.  They're comments about
    serious problems in manufacturing and delivery of products.  
    
    Having trouble with the product names and so forth isn't a sales issue
    that's going to be solved by some slick Mobilizer access.  It's a
    corporate issue about naming, image, logic.  It's a manufacturing and
    delivery issue.  
    
    In another note, someone complained that the price he can charge for an
    installation won't cover the cost of making a second trip out to the
    customer site when all the components aren't there the first time and
    then a third trip when one of the components is DOA.  That's not a
    problem with the price of the installation.  That's a logistics problem
    (didn't anybody in this company ever hear of just-in-time inventory?)
    and a quality problem.  
    
    All this monkeying with the sales force and complaining about the costs
    and worrying about tweaking sales delivery processes is chasing a red
    herring.  It's letting us spend massive amounts of money and time
    thinking we're fixing something while we never even look at the real
    problems. 
    
    --bonnie

    I am the person who started the talk about CVC, so I will try and make
    some sense out of your conversations.
    
    1. CVC is the BPR effort of Digital.  
    - This means that CVC is trying to fix the company.
    
    2. You can't see what CVC has done to help you in sales.  
    - That is because fixing Digital takes more than 9 months.  Much of our
    work will be piloted in Oct. 11.
    
    3. No one from CVC understands sales problems, probably because no one
    came from the field.
    - I was hired for that reason exactly.  I have talked with REAL sales
    people all over the world.  Also, I came out of the Burlington Sales
    Office.  By the way, there is not 1 problem you have mentioned that I
    was not aware of - so I guess I am doing a good job so far.
    
    4. I think CVC has been poorly communicated, too.
    - Maybe that is why the whole comm. group got laid off.
    
    Please call me if you want to know about CVC - 223-0689.  I don't have
    all the answers, but I will try and find out what you want to know.
    
    
    Thanks, 
    
    Michael London

Re: .22  
>    Please call me if you want to know about CVC - 223-0689.  I don't have
>    all the answers, but I will try and find out what you want to know.
 
Please re-read the last paragraph of .16  where (Ken?) asked some pretty
specific questions.  I'm sure alot of us would like to see the answers...

Re: .20 & .0;

I agree that this has gotten a ways off of your original question.  I, too, 
would like to hear the answer, but I'm afraid that we will probably never
get to find out why Digital doesn't hire trained marketing folks to head
up Marketing.  Too many folks have vested interests in the current process
to come out and talk about it.  I wish they would consider the vested interests
of folks like me (job, value of stock, etc.) in having a truly effective
marketing organization...
   

>>    - This means that CVC is trying to fix the company.

This must be like trying to hit a moving target, no?  

    re. CVC comments:
    
    I took a look at the CVC notes file.  Perhaps it was intended to
    generate field comment but there is nearly none there.  The few
    comments that I saw from field people have received little or no
    response.
    
    There has been a lot of talk in the industry about the successes and
    failures in reengineering projects.  As the ex-manager of group who's
    job was to do this for customers I've seen a bit of both sides.
    
    The essential ingredient missing from this reengineering of field sales
    has been the generation of any awareness in this stakeholder group. 
    There has been no useful communication and no one in sales sees any
    evidence that their function is being reengineered. They do see
    associates and support being jettisoned with no modification in the work 
    to be done or how it is done.
    
    I assume the CVC effort has done interviews with people in the
    different job functions from field sales.  I assume that the information
    I've seen published grew out of that process.  But the CVC people
    should know that an outsider seeing the published results (e.g. Engage
    Customer) is likely to be seriously underwhelmed.  The Knowledge
    Aquifer is a great concept.  If we need this before we can reengineer
    the work I think we will have a long wait.
    
    Perhaps the current effort will lead to pilot implementations and these
    are the groups that are involved and 'clued in' to the process. If not
    I believe a serious mistake is being made on not having a clearer
    process for communicating to the stakeholder group and accepting
    feedback from it.
    
    The CVC notes file indicates that a lot of this work has initially been
    done with MVCS.  There is a very interesting note in this file from a
    MVCS manager who'd been TFSOd talking about the promised reengineering
    of their work whch has resulted in no changes yet at the
    Digital|Customer interface.  A lesson should be learned from this note:
    If the people dealing with the customer see no change in the business
    processes, then the work has not yet been reengineered.
    
    Peter Dillard

    If you see the word infrastructure...
    - This shows me that you do not understand that the problem is the
    infrastructure.
    
    Most processes are not going to be elliminated, just redesigned.
    
    No, it is not a goal of CVC to get together legal....
    
    A major goal of CVC is to make us more productive by giving everyone in
    the corporation the exact information they need at their finger-tips to
    do their jobs.  This way they can maximize their time doing what they
    are hired to do.  ie. sales can sell, not hunt for which applications are 
    being ported to Alpha OSF/1.
    
      

    >
    >1. CVC is the BPR effort of Digital.  
    >- This means that CVC is trying to fix the company.
    
    	How?  Seriously.  I haven't seen one thing out of the CVC.
    
    >2. You can't see what CVC has done to help you in sales.  
    >- That is because fixing Digital takes more than 9 months.  Much of our
    >work will be piloted in Oct. 11.
       
    	Is this the system that Adriana promised (in print) would be fully
    	functional in June?  
    					andrew
    	

    CVC has had some of the same layoffs as other places.
    
    Therefore work has changed - groups have reorganized.
    
    Adriana is not here so I don't know what she promised.  She is having a
    going away party tonight.  I will not be going.  I'll be at the gym. 

    Would someone start a note - CVC?
    
    This is a good note that noone is addressing.

    Adriana promised that there would be a fully functional online
    configurator available by June.  This promise was made in print in
    February, in one of the internal Digital papers.
    
    I was wondering if the first implementation scheduled for Octobver
    is the same thing?

    Yes,
    
    The online configurator will be piloted in October.  
    
    The reason the date of June slipped is because when we had our newest
    big quarterly loss - everything in CVC went up for evaluation.
    
    I have seen it and walked sales people through it.  They like it much
    better than AQS.  

    >    I have seen it and walked sales people through it.  They like it
    >much better than AQS.  
     
    Not much challenge here. Try Account Workbench or Opportunity Pipeline.
    More "easy" hits.

RE: Cheryl Bulmer's and Michael London's points in general

Please don't get upset at some of the feedback you are getting here.  What
you are hearing in this sequence is the level of frustration at our current
systems.  The intensity that we bring to this discussion simply shows you
how desperately we need something like CVC.


RE: .22
    
>    4. I think CVC has been poorly communicated, too.
>    - Maybe that is why the whole comm. group got laid off.

You have identified an internal problem to the CVC team.  I often run into
internal problems at Digital which impact my customers.  And all of them
had only one comment when I tried to say "Well, Digital has this problem...".

They say "We are your customers.  How you solve your internal problems is of 
no interest to us, the fact that you are having problems is of no interest to 
us, we want what you promised us, and we want it when you promised it".

Does this seem unnecessarily harsh?  I think so, but all my customers are
united in this.  Do they know something about vendor management that we
in the field do not?  It certainly is an effective technique: I have not
talked about Digital's internal problems with my customers in years.  What
I (and the Sales Reps and Sales Management and others) have done is worked 
around Digital's problems to deliver good service to the customer.  

The CVC team is the vendor.  We in the field are your customers.


RE: .26

>    If you see the word infrastructure...
>    - This shows me that you do not understand that the problem is the
>    infrastructure.

No, I do understand that the problem is the infrastructure.  But the solution
is not to say "we have to fix the infrastructure", but instead to say:

  - "we will replace AQS with configurators on each Sales Reps PC"
  - "we will bring up an on-line system that every Sales Rep, Sales Support, 
     and Sales Manager can access 24 hours/day on their own that will show 
     accurate pipeline for every product, exact status of every order (like 
     FedEx does tracking packages), and exactly what was sold to who by who",
  - "we will replace the PID approval process so that every PID will only talk 
     about products that are more than 6 months out"

*SPECIFICS*!  *DETAILS*!  

Not general statements that carefully avoid identifying any process or group
that needs to be revamped, renovated, or eliminated (excuse me, redesigned).
And every specific point *MUST* have a date associated with it.

>    A major goal of CVC is to make us more productive by giving everyone in
>    the corporation the exact information they need at their finger-tips to
>    do their jobs.  

Hallelujah!  That is one of the things we desperately need.  Please tell us 
HOW and WHEN you are going to do that!  And if you don't know (and I certainly
understand that you may not have settled on anything final at this point),
share your ideas with us and let us give you feedback on what is good and
what is not.

And that does not mean puff pieces in Digital Today, which are only you
sending us information.  It means encouraging feedback from us to you, and
picking communications channels which are two-way.


RE: .31
    
>    The online configurator will be piloted in October.  
    
If I can suggest that we learn from the 500lb gorilla of the market: Microsoft.
They write very large very complex programs, and put them out to some of the
most vicious, nasty, nit-picky, and in general hard-to-please people in the
world: PC gurus (or people who *think* they are PC gurus).  How do they do it?

By having *HUGE* field tests, involving literally 10s of thousands of people.
And they do it *VERY* early in the cycle.  And much of the code is garbage:
slow, buggy, major sections of functionality missing, no documentation, etc.

But they are remarkably successful at this.  MS-DOS V6.0 had the biggest 
field test ever devised, and you had people tripping over themselves trying
to sign up to install beta code on their machines.  Windows-NT was the same:
massive numbers of people paying hundreds of dollars (plus the cost of
upgrading their own hardware) in order to field test code for Microsoft.

But when the product(s) came out they were very solid products.  Yeah, they
had a few bugs, and yeah there were some holes, but in general that massive
field test put that code through the wringer, making it very high quality.

And more than that, you had a very large group of people very interested in
the process.  People were talking about it, hundreds of news and magazine
articles were written about it, and in general Microsoft got publicity for
their products that even Bill Gates couldn't have afforded to pay for.

The earlier you show large numbers of people what you have, the better system
you will have at the end.  And if people had a hand in testing it, and if the 
delivered system shows their input, you will instantly have a large customer 
base who wants it, and will encourage its use by other people.

Don't be afraid of field testing code with holes and bugs.  We are used to
that.  But if what you have is truly better (and I believe you when you say
it is), then showing it *NOW* to large numbers of people will help you, and
make more people believers in CVC.

-- Ken Moreau

                     <<< Note 3216.34 by MROA::SNIDERMAN >>>

Re: Note 3216.31 by ASABET::LONDON 
    
>    The online configurator will be piloted in October.  
    
>    I have seen it and walked sales people through it.  They like it much
>    better than AQS.  

	AQS is not, and has never been, a configurator.  

	AQS is a quoting tool that was only intended to be used after 
	model numbers had been selected.  It was designed this way so 
	as to not have redundant functionality with the XSEL/XCON tools 
	supported by the Solutions Configuration Infrastructure Engineering 
	group.  Maybe you are using the term "AQS" to include the full
	suite of tools that are accessible to sales people from the AQS 
	menus?

	XSEL/XCON's value to the field has always suffered because it
	never covered the full product set.  As a result, these tools 
	often reduced, but almost never eliminated, the need for manual 
	configuration efforts and rework.  Frequently they added time to 
	the total configuration process. 

	I've seen quite a few prototypes for configuration tools over
	the last decade.  Almost all of them had spiffy interfaces and 
	were fun to play with.  

    MOVE CVC TALK TO CVC NOTE

    Getting back to my original subject, I would like to say that a kindly
    soul who shall be nameless has privately (via VAXmail) pointed out to
    me that the esteemed Mr. Cannizarro has more background in marketing
    than was mentioned in the press release in Livewire.  This person also
    tells me the Mr. C. earned his promotion by being in the marketing
    arena (marketing operations?) of C&P, one of the most profitable parts
    of the company.  It was mentioned to me that value judgements not based
    upon fact are not what this company needs at this time.
    
    I certainly stand corrected on Mr. Cannizarro in specific, but also
    stand by my statement in .0; while Mr. C. may have assisted C&P to
    greater success, we absolutely need to realize and act upon the
    knowledge that true success will evade us without excellent marketing
    and advertising, something we completely lack.  At least one of the
    reasons we lack good marketing is that we do not have the skill set in
    house; the other is a continuing, pervasive arrogance that we don't
    need slick marketing people or slick marketing methods.
    
    If we want new customers, they must see something of us
    other than dull press releases, mediocre-to-bad stock analyst reviews
    and unimaginative, limited-placement advertisements.
    
    Just my opinion...
    
    M.

    >>> Mr. Cannizarro has more background in marketing than was mentioned
    >>> in the press release in Livewire...Mr. C. earned his promotion by 
    >>> being in the marketing arena (marketing operations?) of C&P, one 
    >>> of the most profitable parts of the company.  
    
    It's interesting that the announcement of his promotion to a marketing
    position didn't see fit to mention his marketing qualifications, only
    his engineering ones.  
    
    --bonnie 

    Ya know....I just received my MBA in International Marketing (provided
    for by DIGITAL) and they (Marketing) tell me they have no room for me
    there. I shall NEVER consider the education a waste but thats the way I
    think DIGITAL is looking at it.