Volume 2, Number 9__________________ _________________________________
September 1983
World-Wide
Marketing/Sales Symposium
Al Crawford
Joins Corporate Marketing Staff
Gale Morgan To
Head At Marketing Group
Grant
Saviers Named Head Of Storage Systems
Korean
Airlines Crash Kills Digital Employee
The
Compatible Family Of Digital Products
Employee
Communication Policy And Plan On Its Way
Europe
Develops Organizational Effectiveness Focus
Educational
Services Reorganizes Customer Training
World-Wide
Marketing/Sales Symposium
"This is one of the biggest sales
meetings the world has ever seen. That's because we've got
the biggest message to tell," said Ken Olsen, president, as
he welcomed the sales force to the company's first worldwide
marketing/- sales symposium last month. Some 7,200 Digital
sales and marketing people participated.
Jack Shields, vice president, group
manager, explained the rationale behind this huge meeting,
"After the January Sales Symposium it became obvious that it
was impossible to communicate the fantastic feeling of the
power and capability of this company to the individual sales
contributors unless you brought them all together and let
them see and talk to the marketing and engineering people
and see and touch the whole spectrum of products,
capabilities and market applications that we have going for
us."
About 1,200 people from marketing and
engineering helped prepare and staff the exhibits at
"DECtown," the centerpiece of the week's activities. DECtown
remained open for several additional days after the
symposium was over to demonstrate the company's breadth and
strength to financial analysts, customers and the families
of employees.
Products, people and enthusiasm
"With our new products, our order rate
is turning around and our backlog is growing significantly,"
Ken told the sales force. "Thanks to the recession, we have
learned to sell, learned to market, and we have products to
solve all problems. So now with the products you see here
and the marketing which has been prepared for this show —
the world is ours.
"Our strategy has always been to make
commercial and industrial products. We avoid the consumer
market. We don't chase after those markets which boom
quickly and then quickly disappear. Parallel to this
approach, we go after the world's best companies. And
satisfying the most critical, quality companies makes it
easy for us to sell to all the other companies.
"The result is that all through our
history, some people have criticized us because there has
always been somebody doing better. But we go after the
quality market, the discerning customer, doing a thorough
job. Sometimes that means we have to be patient and wait for
products because our products have to be right. But by
pursuing quality, we end up with a stable set of customers.
"And I feel
confident now more than ever that this strategy is the one
that counts and that we want to follow. Now, we have the
products; we have the people; we have the enthusiasm.
"The other
night I came to look at this show with my wife. We stopped
and asked the elevator operator what the big tent was for.
He said it was for Digital. My wife meant to ask him what
Digital was going to use it for, but he misunderstood and
said, !Oh Digital, they make some of the world's
finest computers'. That could be the theme of the whole
conference."
Messages to remembers PCs and
interconnect
"There are two
key messages I want to get across," Ken emphasized. "I think
everyone who works for Digital should have an understanding
of these two subjects. How do our three personal computers
and our Micro/PDP-11 fit together? And how does all our
interconnect fit together?
"Our DECmate
is the best standalone word processor. Our Rainbow is the
best industry standard personal computer. The Professional
has the best quality of everything. The Micro/PDP-11 is
probably one of the best engineered and best documented
projects in the history of the company. It has become one of
our best-selling products. OEM customers who were
considering building their own computers with microprocessor
chips appreciate what the Micro/PDP-11 has to offer. And
businesses that started with personal computers and now find
they need a multi-user minicomputer are also turning to the
11.
"I challenge
you to learn about our interconnect. Learn how with
clustering we tie similar computers together in the most
wonderful, elegant ways to any number of disks in any
configuration so you can do multiprocessing for reliability,
redundancy or prestige. Learn about Ethernet which is the
fastest, most efficient, most elegant way of interconnecting
computers, and be reminded again how we do our low-speed
communications with DECnet and over serial lines.
"Communications
and interconnect have always been one of our advantages. Now
everybody is talking about networking computers. We're the
only ones that have a family of computers from the very small
to the very large that were designed
so that they can talk together
efficiently and effectively.
When it comes
to communications and software
, we probably have maintained better discipline than
anyone in the industry.
This is going to be one of our most significant advantages,
something everybody else dreams about."
Marketing — DECtown is the message
According to Ed Kramer, vice president,
Corporate Marketing, the goals of the meeting were learning,
inspiration and fun. He told attendees, "We want to help you
better understand our products, to let you see some of the
new things that we have coming and how they serve the
applications and industries they were meant for. We also
want to inspire you and make you enthusiastic. It's
important for people to take pride in their company so they
can transmit this enthusiasm to customers. Our third goal is
to have fun. Being challenged is fun and working as part of
a team is fun, and the most fun of all comes from being part
of the winning team."
DECtown was a comprehensive series of
exhibits and demonstrations intended to show the universe of
Digital's market opportunities. Like the real marketplace,
it was not neatly aligned along the lines of our internal
product or marketing organizations. "Wherever possible,"
claimed Ed, "we displayed our products in a simulated
end-user environment. We have a factory, university, service
bureau, government building and even a computer store. Where
our products and people work together to serve the needs of
our customers, we will certainly be in a much better
position to win."
The meeting was also an opportunity for
marketing and sales people to reestablish old ties and make
new ones. "One of the functions of marketing at Digital," Ed
told the sales force, "is to help interpret for our
development people the real needs of the marketplace, the
customers and the sales force. So it is important for you to
build relationships and communications with our marketing
folks so they can do a better job passing information along
to the development people who will, in turn, provide us with
products we need for the marketplace.
"The other function of the marketing
organizations," Ed concluded, "is to tell the world about
our products. The world, to a large degree, is you, the
sales force. We tell you; and you, in turn, tell your
customers. Obviously, we also use other media — advertising,
sales promotion, etc. — but our communication with you is
the most important part of this effort."
Sales — ready for an exceptional year
"The past two years have been difficult
for all of us," admitted Jack Shields as he welcomed the
sales force to the symposium. "The world economy has been in
a recession; the company has been going through organization
changes; new competitors have appeared; and we've been
trying to make some of our high-demand new products
available for customers.
"Ql of FY83 was a very difficult time
for us. That was when we made some changes with regards to
the connections between the Field and the marketing
organizations. But during FY83, we actually grew our backlog
and our booking rate was up well over 30 percent. The yields
in the corporation were at a historic all-time high, and our
sales productivity was up 36 percent. I think that was a
fantastic accomplishment, given the circumstances and the
world economy."
Jack noted that the delivery situation
is improving. "In particular, we expect to ship a few
thousand RA81 disk units in Q1 and nearly double that in Q2.
We will begin shipping the RA60 disk unit in small
quantities in Ql, and we are working like the devil to try
to get our capacity up on that. The Micro/PDP-11 looks good,
and the capacity is coming. Meanwhile, the personal
computers are being shipped, and we are working on getting
more software for them."
He concluded,
"The backlog is there, the products are becoming available,
and we're beginning to see some economic improvement. All in
all, we think we have everything positioned to make FY84 an
exceptional year."
Al
Crawford
Joins Corporate Marketing Staff
Al Crawford
has been named the Corporate Marketing Finance and Planning
manager and given responsibility for Digital’s Strategic
Planning function. He will report to Ed Kramer and Al
Bertocchi for the former role, and Win Hindle and Ed in the
latter capacity.
As Finance
& Planning manager for Corporate Marketing, Al will
participate in new venture proposals and programs, apply
strategic business analysis to proposed marketing
alternatives, provide functional leadership for the market
group F&A managers, and audit/measure the effectiveness
of Digital’s marketing programs.
In his role as
head of Digital's Strategic Planning effort, Al will provide
the leadership necessary to allow each organization in the
company to produce and maintain a plan that is supportive
of, and supported by, the plans of the other groups and
functions. The intention is to stimulate strategic thinking
and to integrate all long-range plans along the dimensions
of function, geography, market and product.
Al, who joined
Digital in 1976, has been the Corporate manager of Digital’s
Internal Information Services (DIS) for over six years.
Tom Maguire
has been named the acting head of DIS. Tom has been with
Digital for almost three years. Prior to that, he worked
with Touche-Ross in systems consulting.
Andy
Knowles
Leaves Digital
Andy Knowles
has resigned from Digital to pursue personal interests.
During his 14 years with the company, Andy was involved in a
number of important start-up activities. He joined Digital
in 1969 as product line manager for the then-new PDP-11
minicomputer. He was named vice president of the Small
Computer Goup in 1972, ran the Components Group in 1974 and
became vice president of Corporate Marketing in 1978. He
served as vice president of the Technical Group from 1979 to
1981, when he was named to head the Small Systems Group.
In submitting
his resignation, Andy said, "I have enjoyed my 14 years with
the Digital organization. It was truly exciting to have been
able to contribute to so many important activities in behalf
of the company, and I wish them continued success."
Ken Olsen
said, "We are grateful to Andy for his contributions to
Digital’s progress. He will be missed."
Gale
Morgan To Head At Marketing Group
Gale Morgan
has been named head of the newly created Artificial
Intelligence Marketing group, reporting to Ed Kramer, vice
president, Corporate Marketing. Gale has been a member of
Digital’s Sales organization for 15 years, working most
recently as the Regional Sales Manager for the Western
region. Prior to that, he was Regional Manager for the
Central region.
The AI
marketing group will work to establish Digital as a leading
supplier of computing tools for AI research. It will build
and develop technology expertise and identify markets and
worldwide product application opportunities. The marketing
group will be headquartered in the Sacramento/Davis,
California area, operating temporarily out of the Digital
Sacramento facility at 9719 Lincoln Village Drive,
Sacramento, California 92138 (phone 916-362-2420). Any
calls, inquiries or information regarding AI should be
directed to that location. Plans call for additional group
members to be located in Europe and the New England area.
Grant
Saviers
Named Head Of Storage Systems
The Storage
Systems Engineering and Manufacturing organizations have
been combined under the leadership of Grant Saviers, vice
president, who has been head of the Storage Systems
Engineering group for the last four years. In making the
announcement, Jack Smith, vice president, Manufacturing,
noted that, "The integration of these functions, together
with our strong linkage with the Customer Service and
Marketing organizations, will enable us to enhance our
position as a product leader in the Storage and Systems
businesses especially as we move into more process
intensive technologies."
Grant has been
with Digital since 1968, when he came to the company as an
engineer. He has been instrumental in developing Digital's
mass storage capabilities, and among other responsibilities,
managed the start up of our Colorado Springs disk
engineering facility.
Korean
Airlines
Crash Kills Digital Employee
Robin Siu,
Distribution and Sales manager for Korea and Taiwan, was one
of the 269 people who perished when Korean Air Lines flight
#007 was shot down on August 31.
Robin was a
DEC-100 winner twice, and this year was one of three
DECathalon winners from the Far East. He joined the company
two years ago this September as the senior sales
representative from Taiwan, and his success in this position
quickly brought him additional responsibilities for sales in
Korea and distribution in both Taiwan and Korea.
When this
tragedy occurred, Robin was returning from business in the
U.S. and was on the way to Korea for meetings.
