"Compaq versus Dell" reminded me of this - did anyone else remark on it:
Snyder Quits Compaq
Just as the PC Maker
Begins New Tactics
>>The Wall Street Journal via Dow Jones
HOUSTON -- A senior executive leading the strategic change at Compaq
Computer
Corp. has resigned, just as the personal-computer maker begins new production
and distribution tactics.
Richard N. Snyder quit Friday, after just nine months as Compaq's
senior vice
president for world-wide sales, marketing, service and support. His duties will
be filled by Chief Executive Officer Eckhard Pfeiffer until a sucessor is named,
a company spokeswoman said.
Mr. Snyder, 52 years old, said the job, which was created in a
corporate
restructuring last October, didn't turn out the way he expected owing partly to
tensions between product and marketing groups.
"There was a lack of clear alignment about what the role should be,"
Mr.
Snyder said. He said he is considering several opportunities, including joining
an Internet-related start-up.
Mr. Snyder, who previously held senior posts at Dell Computer Corp.
and
Hewlett-Packard Co., became a key designer of Compaq's new strategy to lower its
distribution costs and prices. The company decided to produce PCs when customers
order them, instead of to market forecasts, and ship some directly to customers.
At a customer conference in April, dealers criticized the plan and
cited Mr.
Snyder's Dell experience as a sign Compaq would eventually cut them out of its
marketing. Those sentiments later abated, and Mr. Snyder said they played no
role in his decision to leave.
"It was a personal choice," he said, noting that he kept his family
at home in
Austin and commuted to Compaq's Houston headquarters, about 150 miles away. "It
really didn't hark back to anything with regard to the Dell experience.">>
Snyder was supposedly the point man on build-to-order. Was he already out of the picture and just waited until after the announcement to make his exit? Does this say anything about how water-tight this new strategy is? |
