There was also the dread of realizing that with so many associates leaving voluntarily or being let go all the work that was going to now need to be done by the remaining employees.
What HP concentrated on was the redefining of processes within each business unit to be more customer-centered. Employees were specifically asked for their inputs and opinions of how to make processes within the jobs more aligned to the customer, and less focused on just completing for meeting internally-focused and often irrelevant metrics of performance as far as the customer was concerned. The skills needed by workers first centered on re-defining and then taking ownership of their new jobs. HP chose to rely heavily on the Business Process Management (BPM) concepts of Dr. Michael Hammer in redefining their business units to be more customer-centered.
Dr. Michael Hammer in his many books on this topic including the Agenda (2003) illustrate through examples and intensive analysis of how companies can improve their performance through examining their many processes and re-defining them for greater competitive performance. HP chose to first re-define customer-facing processes first, looking for greater effectiveness in reaching prospects, channel partners and customers and working with them. Davenport (1992) prescribes a five-step approach to the Business Process Reengineering model. HP relied heavily on...
The five steps are shown below:
Develop the customer-driven vision and process objectives first: The BPR method is driven by a vision which implies specific selling and service objectives including the development of an entire series of new online selling and service skills, online ordering tools that traverse all product divisions, and the use of the Internet as collaboration medium.
Identify the customer-facing processes to be redesigned: Many organizations take a 'high-impact' approach to redefining the most critical processes first when in fact effective change management begins at the individual employee level and must build out from there.
Understand and measure the existing processes and post results publicly: From the context of change management, this is critical. Measurements of progress as defined by process improvements in attracting, selling, and serving clients need to be posted and referred to often.
Design and build a prototype of the new customer process that integrates technology and makes HP more efficient at serving customers: This is especially important for the creation of entirely new strategies and in planning their use of technology.
Measure, Monitor and Modify. HP's culture is highly focused on metrics and measurement, and this aspect of
