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Is HP Right? Autonomy Salesperson Shares Internal Emails
Julie188 writes "You know how HP said it uncovered $5 billion worth of 'improper' revenue at Autonomy? One thing HP has accused Autonomy of doing is booking software-as-a-service contracts as software licensing deals. So how might that type of accounting work? A former Autonomy salesperson fighting a legal battle with HP says she's seen it happen firsthand. She's shared internal Autonomy emails and documents that show the details of one deal. '[While working for software company CA, Virginia Briody] had closed a four-year $1.22 million hosting/software-as-a-service deal with a customer, Pioneer Investments, and was paid her full commission, over $100,000, she says. Autonomy bought the software unit from CA on June 9, 2010, and Briody became an employee of Autonomy and Autonomy inherited the Pioneer contract. But there was an issue. Autonomy didn't acquire all the pieces called for in the original contract, Briody says. It didn't have a partnership with the hosting facility and it didn't gain from CA a critical piece of compliance software the customer needed, she says. Autonomy needed to find substitutions or Pioneer would cancel the contract, Briody says. So in the fall of 2010, she signed a new deal with Pioneer and walked away with a four-year, $1.859 million contract of which Autonomy execs considered $1.8 million as new revenue, she says.'"
Not news for nerds, stuff that doesn't matter unless you wear a $1000 suit.
but did they also pay the commission as a whole new sale?
I read TFS. I understood nothing. My nerd days must be over.
Looks like nowadays nerds are those who have deep insight into financial dirt. Forget computers, gadgetry, coding and Science Fiction. Welcome corporatism, financial stuff, sales and so on.
I'm a sad puppy now.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
HP got suckered.
Just Desserts... They've been suckering their customers since at least Carly Fiorina...
They used to be a tech research titan, now they sell printer ink.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Peter Burrows's 2003 biography, "Backfire: Carly Fiorina's High-Stakes Battle for the Soul of Hewlett-Packard," about the former Hewlett-Packard czarina, included background and commentary from Fiorina's first husband, Todd Bartlem. Bartlem comes off as a bitter, wounded, and dare I say truthful commenter on Fiorina's hard-won transformation from world's peppiest receptionist to CEO of a prestigious multinational corporation.
Bartlem describes Fiorina worshiping the book "Dress for Success" like a "Bible," and ditching him without leaving a phone number or forwarding address.
Sad, is it not. I loved working for them several decades ago. Learned about the HP way. But now? The HP way, is long away.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And I was just re-reading the H-Dogs mad Midstate posts last night...
Highlight of the evening: S'mores made with the help of Bunsen burners!
Be there! (Or I get your share of marshmallows and chocolate!)
I have been a captive in America my entire life. Everybody and everything uses customary units instead of metric.
That's because the real HP was renamed Agilent. They left the HP name behind with the dregs.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
It is sad.
I've always used HP calculators, my dad tought me RPN, and that's all I've ever used. When I was in school in the 80's, I paid $400 for an HP41 built in Corvallis. When the keys stopped working, I carefully opened the case, cleaned the contacts with a little Carbon Tet and put it back together. Where can you buy a decent RPN device today? Nowhere.
I'm not a hardware guy so I don't use HP scopes (do they even still make bench equipment?), but for my current job with the DoD, I insisted they buy me an RPN calculator. The upside is that no one will steal it off my desk because they can't figure out how to use it.
Today, HO sucks, and unless they want to continue down the road that many tech giants have gone - to exist as brand names only on cheap junk - they need to do something quick.
Prediction: Not going to happen.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I'm not a hardware guy so I don't use HP scopes (do they even still make bench equipment?)
HP's spun off their scientific instruments, electronic test equipment, and a number of things, into Agilent Technologies about 20 years ago. Agilent still makes bench equipment, to the point that I have some pieces of HP/Agilent equipment that are identical except for the corporate logo on them (including having the same model number).
Where can you buy a decent RPN device today?
You buy an older HP calculator on eBay of course.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
The biggest problem was that HP didn't spin off their Corvallis calculator group to Agilent. HP management never understood the fact that HP calculators were predominantly used by the same technical customers as their other instruments - hence HP-IB, HP-IL calculator interfaces, the huge popularity of their EE software packs, etc - and shouldn't have been left to rot with the office equipment business.
Take HP Loses in Tax Court to IRS and HP Grabs $14.5B Job Creation Tax Break As It Celebrates Layoffs, for instance. :-)
Where can you buy a decent RPN device today? Nowhere.
Well, nowhere except Amazon I guess. Or TigerDirect, or Best Buy, or whatever ... I have one of these and it works great. I don't have cause to do a lot of number-crunching most days anymore, though, and the AAA batteries on it tend to run out even after I haven't been using it, so more often than not I end up using an HP48 emulator on my Android phone. I do like the real buttons on the standalone calculator, though, so if I had more cause to calculate I'd use that.
Breakfast served all day!
If you are under a time pressure, then generally you'll randomly select some specimens from the summary list of income sources (contracts) and send auditors to inspect those specimens in detail. That way you are likely to catch a "bad batch". It's not perfect, but a pretty good way if you can't check them all thoroughly.
I suspect HP only did summary auditing.
The banks should have done depth sampling with their bundled mortgages and perhaps saved the world from a global recession.
Table-ized A.I.
It's accrual accounting versus cash accounting.
Booking as the wrong kind of deal WOULD potentially be an underhanded way of recognizing revenue improperly - claiming "We got $120,000 today" when in fact what you really got was an agreement to receive $10,000 a month for 12 months.
Well, state lotteries always seem to be able to get away with this scheme.
Sure she'd like to get the money, but there's also the issue that if the company is going to book revenue in a particular way they have to deal with ALL of the things that go along with that. Companies paying commission don't get to say on one side "this was a great sale and we're going to compensate our executives on a great sales year" and on the other "that's an ok lease agreement you got, too bad commission on those is so low."
That's worse than the old Dilbert where the secretary "neglected" to put anything between the announcements of miserable numbers and an increased United Way push.
fencepost
just a little off
Booking top line revenue at the time they get wet sigs is standard operating procedure for I don't know how long...30+ yrs.
When I saw "CA" in the text, I knew there must be some shenanigans.
Isn't this the same kind of stuff that got Sanjay Kumar of CA in prison?
Well they can't blame this one on him. He may soon have some new cellmates to talk old times.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT