HP-Compaq Post-Merger Channel, Product Info Will Come In A 'Big Bang'

Hewlett-Packard

Barbara Braun, lead program manager for the HP-Compaq merger and a 14-year veteran of HP who was most recently senior director of product development processes for enterprise business, told CRN that toolkits and playbooks spelling out how the combined company and its channel partners will work with each other going forward will be in as many solution providers' hands as possible on the day the merger is approved. HP has declared victory in the bitter proxy battle, but it is expected to take several more weeks before the votes are counted and the results are legally certified.

There are different ways to communicate with partners, Braun said. "You can trickle things out over a long period of time, or you can try to do it very quickly and hit a very large audience," she said. "And that's what we're trying to do. That's the Big Bang concept."

While HP may not be able to contact 100 percent of its customers and partners on day one, one of the company's first tasks will be to make sure solution providers know who their new HP account rep will be, Braun said.

HP has received input from solution providers on which of their HP or Compaq reps have offered the best support in their regions, said Braun. "The intent is, yes, the top people will know who they are dealing with. . . . I know there is concern about that," she said. "And I would continue to encourage people to call up their contacts and voice their opinions. Because we certainly want that."

When asked about the possibility that certain Compaq executives may not fully embrace HP's Hard Deck program, Braun said the new HP will be measuring and holding people accountable for delivering on the promise of the merger.

"It's our expectation across all the plans that the plans are executed," she said. "That's really the expectation that we're setting, and that's what we're going to have to manage. [Enforcement starts from the top. And clearly, the tone that [HP Chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina and [Compaq Chairman and CEO Michael Capellas are setting is that we're going to execute this thing. . . . We're going to have the pulse on what's happening. We basically report-card everybody every week. Further, integration and achieving the integration will be tied to peoples' compensation packages."

From a cultural point of view, Braun said the two companies come from different roots, as she can personally attest. "Well, you know, I'm a vegetarian, and they serve me barbecue every time I go down there," she said.

HP has traditionally been an engineering company, while Compaq has been a PC company, said Braun. "I think the really cool part is, the power we can get combining some of those things," she said. "The more strategic, analytical side of HP with the sort of the fast-moving Compaq. We're really excited about that. I think there's a lot of power there."

The great news about the integration is that the two companies are in similar businesses, Braun said. "If you look at getting together as a team, it's been pretty easy, because we can understand each other. . . . We've had very much of an adopt-and-go mentality,make decisions quickly, and don't revisit [them," she said.

Nearly every facet of the integration has been planned out, from the look of the future product lineup to which software will be used for company e-mails, said Braun. "The [product road maps have been done for some time," she said. "If you think about it, you have to know your road maps early on in order to structure around [them. . . . Of course, they're not public. Nor will they be for a while."

The two companies are now focusing more on the details of the integration, such as how to communicate plans to customers, and what kinds of marketing materials and banners will be needed. To that end, Braun said, the integration team has recently doubled in size to about 1,200 employees, and is growing by about 150 people a week.

These employees, even though they will be on the integration team for a relatively short time, are going through the same "clean room" process the original team members did, said Braun.

"They're meeting the criteria of what we call being clean, meaning they actually go through legal training and learn the procedures of how to share our information and whatnot," she said. "We're trying to basically, No. 1, manage information carefully and obviously want to have a really, really successful launch. That's the point where we want to make sure all our constituents, including our customers and our partners, get the right information. And we want to make sure it's managed really, really well."

However, when moving people into the integration team, HP's No. 1 objective is to manage current business and keep focusing on customers, Braun said. "Every time we add a person, we are going through a trade-off analysis of whether or not that person is best left doing their current job," she said.