记者：大家对于附加率问题的讨论一直都是，你必须要具有竞争力。我可以把惠普的外围设备或者其他任何我想要附加的给加上，但是如果要求我提供一个解决方案，它却不具有价格竞争力……

　　Hurd: Then shame on us. Because our job is to have our products competitive as point products and competitive as bundles. And frankly we want to put more energy behind that attach. Let’s say we’re going to put this economic hook in place so that you represent these poorly positioned products to the marketplace. Our objective is to say, “We think we’ve got great products, and we want to put incentives for aligning those products together to put a better configuration, a better basket of goods if you will, in front of the end customer. ”

　　赫德：那是我们的耻辱。因为我们的工作是使我们的产品无论是作为尖端产品还是作为捆绑产品都具有竞争力。坦白地说，我们希望附加上投入更多的精力。比方说，我们要落实这一经济政策，以便那些处于不利地位的产品推向市场。我们的目标是，“我们相信我们拥有伟大的产品，我们希望在我们的最终用户面前，这些产品会齐头并进有一个更好的商品组合以鼓励我们不断前进。”

　　Reporter: Can you talk a little bit about when you first came in here, and you were looking at the direct vs. the indirect. What were the metrics you were looking at?

　　记者：您能谈谈当您第一次到这里来的时候，您是如何看待直销与间接销售的呢？您关注的度量标准是什么呢？

　　Hurd: And I’ll just give you an example: A number of years ago, IBM (NYSE: IBM) did a very in-depth analysis on direct vs. indirect, just in the PC space, because everyone said direct was absolutely more profitable. And they went out and did little things like, OK, if that ad. in that newspaper is really driven to get somebody to buy direct, then we’d better assign that cost to the direct side of the business. So when they did all of that, in the PC space, they found it was less than one percentage point difference.

　　赫德：我来给你举个例子：数年前，IBM公司（纽约证券交易所：IBM)在电脑空间方面作了非常深入的直销与间接销售的调查，因为每个人都说直销绝对更加有利可图。然后他们走了出去，去调查诸如此类的事情。比如：是否那家报纸的广告，确实会让人们直接购买他们的产品。那么我们就把这项花费归之为对企业直销的一面。因此，当他们在PC领域做完所有这一切时，他们发现这是不到一个百分点的差别。

　　Reporter: Obviously, you did this over a much larger product set. Are there places where you say, as you really look at the data, that the channel is more profitable for us and are there places where direct is more profitable?

　　记者：很明显，你是在一个更大的产品范围内调查的。那么是否在有些场合你会就像是看着数据一样说，这一渠道对我们更有利，在那些领域直销更有利呢？

　　Hurd: You can find data to support any thesis. You’ve got to be careful to normalize the data. For example, it would be unfair for us to say our cost of an order direct is more expensive than the cost of an order indirect if we didn’t normalize the volume. Today, the cost of an order for us indirect is actually less expensive than the cost of an order direct. But the bulk of our business is not direct. So you have to go normalize it and say, listen, in a normalized state what would the two look like? So for example we get tremendous cash-flow turns by dealing with our partners. It’s different when you go direct because you actually have to have more people shipping and packing more orders. So when I sell you a PC one at a time, I have to go collect for that PC. When I sell you a thousand PCs and then you sell them one at a time, I’m going to send you one bill for a thousand PCs. I've lowered my administrative overhead. So you’ve got to get through all that process and understand what is the true infrastructure overhead that you’ve got to go serve that customer or that partner. We somehow had ourselves convinced that a person deployed in the marketplace had to sell direct as opposed to creating demand for Hewlett—Packard. We want people in the marketplace creating demand for Hewlett— Packard. Then we can decide what the appropriate route is to get that demand fulfilled. But in the end, we need to make sure we’ve got the marketplace covered, so that the buying points on the planet that make sense for HP have some sort of demand-creation expertise.

　　赫德：你可以找到数据来支持任何理论，但是你必须要仔细认真地使数据正常化。例如，如果我们未将容量正常化就说我们的直接订单成本比间接订单成本更昂贵，这是不公平的。今天，我们的订单实际上是间接成本与直接订单成本相比要少得多。但是，我们的业务大部分不是直接的。所以你必须去正常化，在规范化的状态上去听去说，这两种是什么样子呢？因此，比如我们和合作伙伴打交道需要大量的现金流动。它不同于你直接的时候，因为这实际上需要有更多的人来运输和包装更多的订单。因此，我一旦卖给你一台电脑，我必须去收钱。当我卖给你1000台个人电脑，然后你负责零售，我就直接把1000台电脑账单寄给你。我已经降低了我的管理开销。所以，你得经历所有的过程，了解什么是真正的基础设施的开销，你得去服务客户或合作伙伴。我们都相信一个人在市场上部署的零售商必须直接销售，不是为惠普创造需求。我们希望人们为惠普的市场创造需求。然后我们就可以找到合适的途径使这种需求得到满足。但到最后，我们需要确保覆盖市场，使与惠普相关的全绿的购买点都具有创造需求的专业技能。