William S. Anderson
William Summers Anderson | |
---|---|
Born | NCR | March 29, 1919
Spouse | Janice Anderson |
Children | Stephanie, Irene, Hope |
William Summers Anderson (March 29, 1919 – June 29, 2021) was a British businessman who served as President and Chairman of the National Cash Register Corp (
Early life and education
Anderson was born in March 1919 in
Anderson was fluent in
Military service and prisoner of war
On December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attacked
NCR beginnings
One of Anderson’s fellow POWs was George Haynes who was the manager of NCR China. After the war, Haynes persuaded Anderson to join NCR and after some brief sales training in England, he was appointed general manager of NCR Hong Kong. At that time NCR Hong Kong was a war-shattered, rag tag branch of about seven people scratching out a living in used business machines. Using his accounting contacts he succeeded in selling accounting machines to all the banks and utility companies, and many commercial and industrial companies. Anderson had studied both Mandarin and Cantonese in his school days and this assisted him greatly during his time in Hong Kong. By 1960, NCR had acquired 97% of the Hong Kong business machine market. At that time George Haynes was based in Japan, heading up the Far East operation.[3]
NCR Japan
When George Haynes was promoted to head office in Dayton Ohio, Anderson left Hong Kong to become Chairman of the Japanese company and vice president for the Far East region. Anderson introduced a “vocational” approach to the Japanese sales organisation whereby a particular customer would have a single point of contact with NCR regardless of the type of product being sold. Under his guidance NCR Japan became the most profitable of all of NCR's worldwide operations.
President of NCR
In 1971, NCR was in serious trouble and was in danger of going out of business. The company had been slow to move from mechanical to electronic products. The board of directors with unusual vision of those times decided that there was no one among the 30 officers of the parent company that could do the job of saving the company and Anderson was asked. So in June 1972, Anderson became CEO of NCR and started the transformation of NCR to be a full electronic data processing company. Many difficult days and the problems ensued. Not only did he have to change the hardware aspects of a mechanical machine business to one making things that worked with bits and bytes, but he had to change the mentality of everyone in the company to do things differently. Anderson also had problems with an unsympathetic media and the
Later life
Anderson stayed on the NCR board of directors until 1989 and was not involved in the acquisition of the company by AT&T in 1991 (NCR was subsequently renamed “AT&T GIS”). The merger was a failure and NCR once again became a stand-alone company in 1997. In his 1991 autobiography, Anderson was optimistic about the AT&T merger, but in a speech in 2006, he described the exercise as a disaster: not only did the market capitalization drop from $7.4 billion to $3.4 billion, there were also operating losses of $4 billion, a total cost to AT&T shareholders of $8 billion. Anderson attributed the failure of the merger to an arrogant attitude by AT&T which resulted in the loss of 90% of NCR’s senior officers and mid-managers which led to the loss of long-time customers.
After retirement from NCR, Anderson served on various stock exchange boards of directors as well as boards of non-profit organizations. He died in June 2021 at the age of 102.[4]
Sources
References
- Charles Babbage Institute(Interview). Interviewed by William Aspray. Dayton, Ohio: University of Minnesota. Retrieved July 7, 2021.
- OCLC 167482930.
- ^ ISBN 9780913428740.
- ^ Hagerty, James R. (July 6, 2021). "Former Prisoner of War Saved NCR From Obsolescence". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved July 7, 2021.