Day 1 of a Never-Ending Journey

Thinking back to my first day at HP when I was an intern in Germany, I could have never dreamed of all of the other “Day 1s” I would experience throughout my career with this company.

During my combined 20+ years at HP, I’ve relocated to six different countries across the Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific, and served in a variety of go-to-market leadership positions across Print, Personal Systems and a GBU leadership role for 3D Printing and Digital Manufacturing. And with each new opportunity, I have been eager to begin the next leg of our journey.

Today, I am feeling that same sense of excitement, anticipation and pride as I step into my next role as HP’s first-ever Chief Commercial Officer, leading our new Commercial Organization.

As you have likely heard, this is just one of many exciting changes taking place at HP. Today, my friend Enrique Lores takes the helm as CEO, driving forward an HP that will continue to be customer-focused, data-driven and digitally-powered. Under our new operating model, we are shifting from three regions to a single, centralized commercial organization with 10 geographic markets, which will drive more seamless integration and alignment across our business and the customer journey.

One could say that my entire career at HP has prepared me for my new role. Growing up in various sales and go-to-market leadership roles has given me the privilege of having my finger on the pulse, on a daily level, of our customers, partners, ecosystem players as well as with diverse teams. As I embark on this Day 1, as I have all my others, I’m particularly focused on three key areas that I believe will truly deliver value for our customers and partners.

1. Reinventing our Customer Experience: We don’t design products and services we think our customers want, we design products and services we know our customers want – because we’ve had our boots on the ground, on the front lines, in lockstep with them every step of the way. Our new model positions us to lead in a landscape of accelerated innovation, enabling us to get closer to our customers and better serve their needs. By reducing the number of management layers in our go-to-market process, we will drive faster decision making and increase flexibility and authority at the local level, where it counts most.
2. Tightening Sales and Marketing Integration: Our new organizational structure will also enable tighter coordination across our sales and sales operations teams, helping ensure we have the right demand generation and omnichannel strategies, as well as consistent local execution of the 4Ps (Product, Price, Promotion and Placement) of Marketing. Our three Centers of Excellence will own all aspects of pricing, sales operations, omnichannel management and go-to-market data analytics and will focus on evaluating the needs and requirements of how we operate in a contractual-based business environment.
3. Driving a Digital-Enabled and Data-Rich HP: Digital transformation yields much more than just operational efficiencies. It has evolved into the go-to method for disrupting and reinventing organizational processes. It creates and delivers goods and services to provide stakeholders with seamless, differentiated and engaging experiences, all the way to ‘Segment-of-One’ customer engagements. This is why we will have smarter and more consistent tools and processes, and continue to transform our business model, portfolio and profit pools. In doing so, we will continue to help our customers and partners shift from transactional sales to contractual and subscription-based relationships that deliver outcome-based value propositions and experiences.

Since my very first day with this company, one thing has remained consistent: our culture of reinvention is just as strong today as when I joined as an intern.

For HP, pursuing our mission to create technology that makes life better for everyone, everywhere means our journey of reinvention is never complete.

Here’s to this Day 1, and all the rest that are to come.