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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gottfried who wrote (22649)	8/7/1998 1:34:00 PM
From: Clarksterh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

GM - The problem with polling your customers is one that it is common in economics - delay. The further down the economic chain that you are from the sector, companies, ... that had the problem, the more time it is going to take for you to find out about it through the chain, because each step in the chain takes time to absorb the information and pass it on. There is no magic in this. For example, if you just became aware that you might have a slow down coming up in the next month, is it your first priority to call up all of your suppliers and explain the situation to them, especially when you aren't that sure of the size of the impact? No, you probably won't tell them anything at all until you have some idea of the size of the problem. If that takes a week or two, then your suppliers learn about it 1 or 2 weeks later than you did. And if you are 3 or 4 links up the chain from whoever is having the problems, then it might be several months before you start hearing anything from your customers. Clark PS This is not to say that polling customers is inappropriate, but it does have weaknesses.