Event

Taking care of SMBs

HP showcased its latest range of offerings for SMBs at the HP Smart Office 2007 meet in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Sudipta Dev reports.

Adrian Koch with the new range of HP computers

HP unveiled 26 solutions for the SMB market in the Asia Pacific region, reaffirming its focus on this sector through the ‘HP Total Care’ initiative. These offerings include notebooks and desktops, mobile devices, printers, Web-based services, etc. They are aimed at providing the best customer experience for millions of small and medium businesses in the region.

A study by Access Markets International (AMI) Partners reports that SMBs in the region are the fastest growing in the world. They are also big IT spenders. In fact, 64 percent of the $210 billion IT spend amongst all organizations in APJ (Asia Pacific and Japan) can be attributed to small and medium businesses. HP’s range of solutions are aimed at catering to the specific needs of the sector by not just selling them a product but being a partner in their growth and development. The ‘HP Total Care’ program takes care of all the concern areas for small and medium businesses before they make any IT investment—namely, cost-savings, value for money and good customer service. “We want to be the best provider of end-to-end solutions for SMBs,” said Adrian Koch, Senior Vice-President, Personal Systems Group, HP Asia Pacific and Japan.

Why ‘Total Care’

SMB IT investments are governed by certain factors:

• SMBs are interested in focusing on their business and want someone to take care of their IT needs, including the protection of their digital assets.
• They want to spend on business, but not on IT infrastructure. They expect more, and want complete solutions.
• More than 90 percent want vendor provided support.
• They thrive on networking.

“For SMB customers, Total Care does not stop at selling. We help them be more efficient,” said Dennis Mark, Vice-President, Marketing, PSG/SMB Segment, HP Asia Pacific and Japan.

For HP, the region is the fastest growing and it wants to further consolidate its position and maintain market leadership in multiple segments. The company has major geographic expansion plans that will be executed by end 2007, particularly in high growth markets namely China, India and Vietnam. “We need to be faster than anybody else in developing these strategies to offer a total customer experience ahead of competition, and be the most preferred vendor for SMBs,” stated Koch.

The ambitious plans for India’s SMB market also include the recent tie-up with ICICI Bank to provide financing to SMBs for HP products and services. “It is a huge market and has great potential. According to AMI-Partners, India’s small and medium-sized businesses are projected to spend $8 billion on IT-related investments this year, a 23 percent increase over 2006. At HP, we believe that these are emerging enterprises and partnering with them to fuel their growth is the right way forward. We currently have a base of 25,000 SMB customers,” said Deepti Dang, Head of Marketing, PSG Commercial & SMB, HP India.

Products for SMBs

Notable among the announced products is the Laser Jet P1006, the smallest and one of the fastest monochrome desktop laser printers around. The instant-on HP Laser Jet M2727 Multi-functional Printer delivers the first page within 8.5 seconds, and is able to differentiate between a fax and a phone call. It is well suited for small businesses which have to make do with a single phone line.

The enterprise mobility suite included two iPAQs, one navigation device and two smart phones. The new business notebook series (6520s, 6720s and 2210b) enhance productivity and ease of use for small businesses. The dc7800 ultra-slim desktop PC boasts of a zero-footprint design that hides the PC behind the monitor. It also enables remote power management.

Print 2.0 is a new printing platform for SMBs to boost marketing effectiveness and control print costs. The idea is to manage content and give resources and tools to customers so that they can see it as a complete ecosystem that includes creating content, sharing and bringing it to print.

SMB response to Web 2.0

Web 2.0 has become a popular platform for networking and sales among SMBs in Asia. They use it to connect and share experiences with vendors, suppliers and reach out to more customers.

“In the growing scenario of user-generated content, security plays an important role; for e.g. phishing is a growing menace. HP’s innovations help to counter such initiatives and enhance security,” said Dang, adding that HP has a clear strategy to sustain growth in the Web 2.0 world, and is forging and fostering channel and industrial partnerships to better serve the needs of SMBs across the region.

All-inclusive service

HP is launching a comprehensive range of free and fee-based services and support for its Indian customers from November 2007 onwards. “HP Total Care provides customers with a full circle of personalized services at every stage of the device/computer lifecycle: from choosing, to using, to protecting, to transitioning,” said Dang, adding that it also includes the following:

• HP PC Tracing Service: A remote data destruction and laptop tracking software to trace the location of a notebook that has been lost or stolen. It e-mails the precise location of a laptop and also lets the owner permanently destroy sensitive data to prevent unauthorized access.
• Defective Media Retention (DMR): An on-site only service option available for eligible products, whereby the customer retains possession of a failed disk drive component on which his sensitive data is stored.
• HP Total Care Advisor: Included on all HP PCs preloaded with Windows Vista, it serves as a trusted guide for support, system health, and services so that customers can spend less time dealing with IT issues and focus on what matters most—their businesses.
• Instant Support Professional Edition: A premier suite of remote troubleshooting tools, it also features 24/7 active chat support from an expert.

Security is also an area of concern as almost 70 percent of e-mail traffic is spam. The company has a service to block spam. It is, for the first time, also offering a Web-hosted service for SMBs [along with Symantec], which anybody, even non-HP customers, can buy.

sudipta.dev@expressindia.com