 Veeco
suffered from a Marketing/Engineering Investment Ratio™ (exclusive of promoting or selling)
of 0.07 for this particulate detector project, a model of failure. While the story is
of a Market Research success, the project was a financial failure in the sense that Veeco
invested $600,000 and had no return on their investment. See the investment evidence.
You
may recall that I supplied or generated all the customer names.
This, alone, was a serious indictment of Veeco's marketing department.
Veeco sold considerable product into the semiconductor fab front end; the
same place where their new particulate detector would be sold. Yet
Veeco's marketing department had neither generated any customer names nor
initiated contact with anyone whatsoever in any semiconductor fab about
this potential new product!
Veeco's
marketing department was overloaded, which is why they gave me this
assignment. Here, again, is another reflection of the lack of budget
and staffing of the marketing function.
To Veeco's
positive credit, their management recognized the need for additional market research input
and took decisive action by bringing me in. They knew that they had to make an
investment decision among several opportunities that was based on facts, not on
wishes,
and proceeded to (have me) gather the information.
Note
that this M/E Ratio™ data point has been narrowly measured on one product at one time in
Veeco's history. That does not mean that Veeco is currently either an overall success
or a failure. This vignette constitutes neither an endorsement nor an indictment by
this writer. |
