NCR History

The New York Times has an in depth look at NCR's decision to leave its 125 years of history in Dayton, Ohio for Atlanta, Georgia. Read: In a Company’s Hometown, the Emptiness Echoes.

NCR's former headquarters in Dayton was sold to the University of Dayton in December, to house its new research institute.

The Dayton Daily News has a nice article on NCR's history and archives tracing some of the long history spanning more than a century.

The article, NCR maintains, 'Dayton is our headquarters' addresses the troubling trend of moving large parts of the company to other locations, such as Atlanta (for the Worldwide Customer Service center) and New York's World Trade Center (for the executive offices).

According to Glass Door's blog on companies with lowest overall employee rating, NCR ranks 15th out of the 50 worst rated companies.

Bill Nuti has an approval rating of only 27%.

This is based on 'at least' 25 employees rating the company.

Other companies on the list are who's who in badly managed companies, such as United Airlines, Reynolds and Reynolds and Radioshack.

First, it was the move of executive offices from Dayton to New York City's World Trade Center.

Now, it is the Worldwide Customer Services' turn. Peachtree City, Georgia, long time warehouse for spare parts, will now house 916 more jobs in customer services as well.

Of course, Dayton and Ohio officials are concerned about this.

Pay cuts to NCR Customer Engineers (CEs), lavish spending by executives and new officers at New York WTC 7 have caused NCR CEs in the USA to push to get unionized.

Moreover, there is now a class action lawsuit about missed wages.

Bill Nuti, NCR's CEO, made $16.8M in total compensation in 2007, an increase of 141% over 2006 (which was $6.8M).

In 2007, NCR closed facilities in Scotland and Canada, outsourcing some manufacturing (Solectron/Flextronics in the USA) or moving it to low cost countries (Hungary, India). Moreover, the Customer Engineers had their pay and benefits slashed severely. In 2008, there is a hiring freeze in effect, as well as coop student hiring freeze. Many employees also got a zero % increase for 2008.

NCR has acquired Touch Automation LLC, a Milwaukee, Wis. company that builds digital media rentals and sales kiosks.

"Our launch of this unparalleled digital media solution underscores our strategy of expanding in to adjacent markets to drive future growth," said Bill Nuti, president and chief executive officer of NCR.

NCR Corporation has been headquartered in its birth place, Dayton Ohio, since its founding in 1884.

When Bill Nuti was hired as NCR's CEO in August 2005, his contract had a clause that he could be fired for cause if he does not relocate by August 2006. See the 8-K filing with the SEC.

Relocation

A few tidbits on NCR and Bill Nuti in the news ...

On October 1st, NCR spun off Teradata (TDC) as a separate company to the shareholders of record. So far, the net is positive gains by the combined shares as compared to the pre spin off price.

Those who have been with NCR during the AT&T merger days, remember Jerre Stead, the CEO of AT&T Global Information Solutions, as NCR was renamed at the time.

I would like to write a bit about Jerre, since he left a bit of a scar on the collective psyche of NCR during his tenure there.