For enterprise customers, the restructuring at Hewlett-Packard Co. that was unveiled Tuesday will improve accountability and focus, according to Todd Bradley, the HP executive vice president who will lead the Personal Systems Group, one of the three major groups at the company. Bradley offered his views on what customers can expect in an interview with Computerworld. Excerpts from that interview follow:
How does this restructuring affect the support and service that enterprise customers get from HP? It shouldn"t impact them at all. This is meant to be a beneficial move to our customers because it brings both focus and accountability into the business units, and into that ultimate sales rep or service person that calls on a customer. We worked very, very hard to, one, take a long look on the organizational structure -- to focus on noncustomer facing people as we made these decisions ... and change our organization from a go-to-market perspective but really make sure it"s relatively seamless to our customers.
What change in particular do you think has the most impact on improving customer interaction? Moving that accountability for the customer to the people that own the customers is extremely important. And the focus that we are bringing to three business units that we created -- personal systems group, imaging group and the service group -- that focus is what"s going to bring innovative, great products to market, as well as help us take costs down.
Will the restructuring result in any road map changes to enterprise product lines? Not that I"m aware of. While people are really focused on the number of layoffs, this is been has been far more focused on how we increase accountability in the businesses.
Is there any special outreach to your large customers to explain this change? That"s ongoing.
What"s the message you"re bringing to the customers? Consistency of product; improved execution, improved accountability in the business segments.
This isn"t the first employee reduction that HP has made. And you have seen some deep cuts. How strong a company will HP be after it completes this restructuring? It"s pretty clear with what we talked about that we"re focused on our strengths. ... You didn"t see us do anything other than focus on innovation, continue to invest in R&D, continue to invest in products, continue to invest in our go-to-market capabilities. I think you"ve seen lots of companies restructure over the last several years. ... Those companies that restructure yet focus on how the restructuring improves their operating performance is what we"ve done here. That"s why you"ve seen us drive so much accountability into the businesses now ... and looked at how we go to market in the most beneficial way.
How does this restructuring differentiate and make you a better company than your top competitors? I think the biggest thing is the fact that we have created three business units that are very focused on their markets, very focused on rapid execution, have far more accountability in place at a lower level than we ever had.
There"s been some eyebrow-raising over the hiring of former Dell CIO Randall Mott to run IT operations internally. There"s been some speculation that this is an indication of a shift toward Intel platforms and away from Unix in terms of products. Is there anything to be read into that? No. Randy Mott is here because he"s one of the best CIOs ... in the country. The challenges we have -- not the least of which is our internal IT cost -- is what he"s focused on.
One of HP"s legacies is its culture of innovation. But there"s an argument that if employees are always worried about restructuring and getting laid off, it"s going to be very hard for them to perform at their best. What are you doing for the employees who remain? It"s a big adjustment. But people are excited about the fact that we have more accountability, that we"ll have a stronger marketing message, more tailored to the products themselves. ... [They] like the movement of responsibility deeper into the organization to allow faster decision-making, which is what"s going to drive customer satisfaction. It"s always a disappointing challenge when you have to make layoff reductions. But the HP way is about innovation, it is about execution, and it"s about how we go market with the best products that we can. And none of that has changed.