HP Case Study Hewlett-Packard Case Study Hewlett-Packard

HP Case Study Hewlett-Packard Case Study Hewlett-Packard is a force to be reckoned with in the enterprise computing realm but they have certainly faced some challenges. These challenges have come from competitors, from clients and from within. Overall, Hewlett-Packard has weathered the storm well and faced its challenges head on but some of the things summarized and spoken of in the Harvard Business Review case study as offered by Das Narayandas and Robert Dudley shows some cracks and fissures in the Hewlett-Packard facade that must be dealt with.

Even if it's mostly or entirely a public relations effort on some of the fronts involved, Hewlett-Packard needs to address its buy-in and client concern issues with the full force of the robust resources that it has available to them. Analysis As explained in the twelfth page of the case study, Hewlett-Packard's CSO division has been experiencing a bit of a trade-off. Even with its purported success with upstream and mid-stream business sales, they were encountering those successes at the expenses of gains in other arena.

The primary loss cited was its ability to show itself to be a "value added" supplier rather than just a seller of computer hardware and there is a huge difference between the two.

In other words, selling a computer to a company is one thing but showing them specific and tangible ways to improve and grow their business is quite another as the latter gives the firm being sold to a huge amount of incentive, especially as compared to simple reliability and uptime metrics, to stay with a vendor rather than change to a competing firm like Dell (Narayandas, and Dudley). Indeed, it is not just Dell and the like that Hewlett-Packard's CSO team should worry about.

IBM, which has left the computer sales racket entirely, has chosen to focus on software solutions and enterprise resource planning (ERP) giants like SAP and such are also trying to market to many of the same customers as Hewlett-Packard even though the latter is not in the computer hardware game at all anymore (if ever) and they don't need a specific hardware set to implement and run their software, not unlike Microsoft Windows and other operating systems and/or software suites.

Even Microsoft has changed the rules of the game by marketing Microsoft Windows productivity stalwart Microsoft Office on Mac-based machines (Foley). As another related example, newer Windows and Mac machines can (or do) run on Intel motherboards and/or processors which was not the case with Mac until fairly recently although they have explored going in a different direction as of late (Satariano).

If there is one core recommendation that should be offered to Hewlett-Packard's CSO division, it would be to establish and maintain a core value chain with the client. The illustration and explanation of the value chain that a customer can quantify, realize and verify should be first explained during the initial sales efforts and should be reinforced with every selling and renewal opportunity that comes along.

If the client openly questions the value they are receiving and/or it becomes apparent through follow-ups and such that there is a deficiency, then any problems can be identified and resolved by the sales and/or operational team. For this to happen, the two groups must work in tandem and one should not undermine the other.

In other words, the common tactic of puffery and over-selling the product is a bad thing for salespeople to do but the operations staff need to back up the legitimate claims of promised service that the salespeople offer. Puffery is not typically actionable in a legal setting but that doesn't bar a lawsuit from having to be defended in some form and it's just bad business (Schroeder).

A tangential, but very much related, example is the art of catering to the client in a way that makes it more personal and professional. The flow of conversation should never become casual unless the client is clearly at ease with it, but politeness and an arc towards Hewlett-Packard CSO team working with the same clients on a consistent basis should be the norm whenever possible because it allows for more continuity, more consistency and a better relationship overall.

A corporate/enterprise client getting a different representative helping them for the same or similar problems as they come up can be a little aggravating even if problems are stamped out quickly every time because there is a bit of a reset that has to happen because the newest representative is probably new (or newer) to the situation than an assigned rep (or reps) would be. Further, the overall number of "heads" assigned to a client should make sense but it shouldn't be too much.

Having a salesperson and an operations person assigned makes a lot of sense but parsing and demarcating it more than that needs to be done only if it makes sense from a procedural/knowledge standpoint. For example, an IT person wouldn't normally be giving legal advice most of the time but having an IT-savvy lawyer would be a much better option if the option exists. Regarding the rationale behind these recommendations, there are a few observations that can be made.

First, continuity and consistency is key and should be the order of the day. The same general process should be followed with every client but with as much customization as is need and with as few people involved (at least directly) as possible. It is just fine to have a lot of different people doing the legwork but this should not change the usual results and this should be as transparent as ethically and reasonably possible.

As far as implementing the above, the CSO needs to craft and execute best practices and procedures have to be drawn up, tested and tweaked as needed and the same task should be done the same way every single time unless time or other constraints demand it, and this is keeping with the theme of the class text and the class discussion behind the same. Second, and lastly, Hewlett-Packard needs to present a united.