On Tue, 2002-08-13 at 14:13, Jerry Feldman wrote: > I don't think so. Forgive me, but I'm really not following your line of reasoning at all.
> The Board of Directors are looking at essentially growth in the value of > their respective investments (not their personal, but the constituency they > represent). They hire a management team to do this. Perhaps this is the biggest *problem* with US businesses' mindset. Growth. It's all about growth. That's what killed the dotcoms (in addition to really stupid ideas). It's a lot harder to find dividend paying stocks than it use to be. In that model, you're not as concerned about growth (increase in stock price) as you are about profitability. A portion of the profits get distributed to the stockholders. > Take a producer of commodity goods, like PCs. Your margin is shriking. You > must (1)increase volume, (2) cut costs. At the same time, customers are not > very loyal. Why would a customer buy otherwise identical systems from > Compaq, Dell or Gateway, Much of that is consumer marketing. Right now, > Dell has a successful marketing edge. Not really sure what you mean by consumer marketing in this context. > In any case, the CEO must cut both > costs and increase revenue in the short run. If support can be moved > offshore at a significant cost savings without any reduction of service, it > will happen. The same for software development. Ask yourself *why* customers are not very loyal. I'm a very loyal Speakeasy DSL subscriber. Why? Customer support that has a clue and speaks my mother tongue clearly and understands it as well. Please note I'm not deriding those who don't speak English or don't speak it fluently. I'm deriding companies that make zero effort to be sure that their support people can communicate clearly in the language of their customers -- whatever language that may be. Part of the reason I ditched my AT&T cable modem service was that every time I called customer support (which was frequent due to shoddy connectivity) I got someone who was difficult understand and worse, could not understand what I was saying no matter how clearly I spoke or how many times I repeated myself. I'd be willing to wager that the Speakeasy crew is paid at least a little more than the average support crew. And they will continue to run a successful business as long as they keep it that way and don't ship support offshore. The problem is that 'significant cost savings WITHOUT ANY REDUCTION IN SERVICE' (emphasis mine) rarely, if ever happens, regardless of what some management types preach to their investors. > Another cost that gets reduced is R&D. Cutting R&D normally helps short- > term profits and hurts the long term viability of a high tech company. Erh...isn't this kinda what I was saying with my 'short sighted' remark? Typically, businesses cut things that help financially in the short term but hurt in the long term. -- -Paul Iadonisi Senior System Administrator Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist Ever see a penguin fly? -- Try Linux. GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
