Acer Italy press conference

Today I got to get out of the office and go into town.

I’m in Milan at the Acer Italy Press Conference. So far the vibe’s pretty good.

There’s a video playing at the moment showing the numerous awards received by Acer and its products over the last year or so. I’ll have to see if I can get my hands on a version to post here although it’s a long one.

The presenters today include Massimo D’Angelo, country manager for Italy, and Valentina Sodini, the Italian notebook product manager. This is her first time in front of the press. As it turns out she’s a natural.

The plan is to talk about results (we already know those but thankfully they get them out of the way right away) and 2007 objectives which is a little more interesting but that’s just me.

The usual line up of current products greeted the attendees but that wasn’t the major attraction. At the back of the conference room – placed on top of a snaking display case that showed the major milestones in the evolution of the brand, from its origins as Multitech through to the name change in 1987 and brand logo evolution – were some of the most significant notebooks in Acer’s history, ranging from the TravelMate 2000 from 1990 right up to the latest Veriton 1000 small form factor PC.

Tomorrow I’ll get a Flickr slide show up – it’s really worth a look.

There is definitely a shift in focus here. The change from a sales-oriented company to one proud of its origins, identity and future is palpable.

OK. Massimo’s on. He starts off by looking at the global positioning, Acer is fourth, only slightly behind Lenovo so at least we have a clear shot at the objective for 2007.

In EMEA, Acer is number 2 overall behind HP but number 1 for notebooks. HP shouldn’t be underestimated though as they’re growing very, very fast in EMEA. Interesting fact: the two leading companies represent over 40% of the total notebook market.

Desktops are a little less promising; Acer is in third position behind HP and Dell.

The competitive edge is coming through. Massimo is clearly aware of the difficulties of the market, the abilities of the competition and also the sheer potential of Acer.

Massimo is now talking about the challenges Acer faced in 2006 among which, reduced ASPs feature heavily. This is interesting in light of the declarations made by Gianpiero Morbello a few days ago in the UK. Perhaps Acer is so confident about the success of its products that it has decided to drive the market back up again?

OBJECTIVES
Become Top 2 within 2008.
N.1 notebook
N.3 desktop
N.4 Server

Look out competition - this is where Acer’s going to pushing hardest ;-)

Massimo has now moved on to structural changes within the company.
Acer has split its European operations into two areas: mature markets and emerging markets. At the same time, the company has split its product divisions into two new business divisions. Professional and Consumer, meaning that product managers no longer have a broad market sweep spanning from home users to large enterprises.

THE EXTENSA’S BACK!
The Extensa makes a welcome return at the value end of the professional notebook segment that includes TravelMate, Veriton and Ferrari brands. Aspire (NB and PC) to be handled by consumer division.

There will no longer be business products (TravelMates) available in consumer channels and vice versa. Essentially, from now on, you’ll only find Aspires and consumer products in retail stores. For everything else, you’ll have to go to another channel (Acer Point). From the looks of things that also includes the premium Ferrari range too, but I’ll have to check on this.

What this also means (although no-one’s mentioned it) is that there’ll be a clear distinction between the Aspire and TravelMate lines, which at the moment overlap considerably, both in looks and features. Don’t know how or in what form, but it seems to me that if they have separated these two product lines into two distinct divisions and they are no longer to be sold through the same channels, they are going to be very, very different from each other sooner or later.

SERVICE
Now here’s something special. Acer Italy has invested 1 million Euros in a new site for service laboratory, designed to:

• Improve logistic flows
• Increase availability of spare parts
• Improve the quality of repairs
• Reduce repair cycle times

Acer has also invested in Customer Service and Support (CSS) software that measures cycle times, average repair times, max delays for repairs, average no. calls, call centre success rates etc..

This is great news as it’s more than likely to be (if it isn’t already) replicated across the entire European region and beyond.

Another novelty is that dealers are now to be included into the service flow. That means, rather than schlepping off to the Acer service centre, customers can now take their malfunctioning products back to where they bought it and these dealers will take care of sending, tracking and returning the damaged product. The dealers will then be remunerated directly from Acer for their trouble. Now that’s what I call a step in the right direction!

This program is due to be up and running by the end of March 2007.

Valentina Sodini
Valentina gets straight to the point, explaining Acer’s approach to its customer base and the products and solutions that derive from this relationship.

She’s describing Acer’s approach to its customer base. The way it focuses on end users, the market, the channel and its needs. Valentina’s doing a great job but apart from the new organizational structure, there’s no news here, except for the rising popularity and impact of online E-Tailers.

Q&A Time: Massimo confirmed that Vista will make no impact on the retail price of Acer’s products and went through the Vista upgrade process. This is handled directly through the moduslink website (details available on Acer’s press release).

There have been claims that this is a free service whereas in fact the company responsible for shipping the software is charging the users shipping costs (currently averaging at about 20 Euros).

OK that was a long day and this is an unusually long post but I wanted to share this side of the Acer experience with you. Tomorrow I’ll try and get some of the photos up.