COVER STORY
ners to diversify their offerings and grow sales. But he also sees it as an opportunity for the vendor to develop better ways of working in the future by more closely integrating Poly’s technolo- gies with others it owns. One issue HP is tackling with these future solutions has been a defining trait of the hybrid work era: the awkward asymmetry of hybrid meetings, where remote participants can only see col- leagues gathered in a conference room at a distance, which can make it hard for the former group to read body language and feel like they’re a part of the conversation. To solve this, Lores said HP is looking at ways to connect laptops in the meeting room to the videoconferencing system to create a more dynamic experience for remote participants. “If you want to see the people in the room, every PC today has a camera and a speaker. So the vision is, how do we integrate those into the system in the room?” he said. “So if you’re looking at that, you can connect to Jeff’s PC and you can see Jeff’s face bigger and see what his reactions are. Is he happy with what Enrique’s saying?
Lores said that he couldn’t think of anyone better than a former CEO to manage and grow the division as a business, especially someone who was moving his previous company in that direction. “As we had many conversations when he was running Poly, he had a very clear vision about how to grow the services and solutions business. At Poly, this was the direction they were taking with the company. That fits extremely well in what we’re trying to do,” he said. HP is working on making it easier for the company’s part- ners to manage the full portfolio by integrating the tools and programs of HP’s services, according to Lores, “which will help them capture more business and eventually help them make more money.” To Shull, the move to services will require more than just tools and programs. It will also require partners who are willing to change the dialogue with customers to move from a transactional approach to a “lifelong” customer relationship services model.
He’s thinking if Enrique’s speaking too long, he should stop.You can really see that by connecting to his camera, and this is one of the experiences we are going to be [developing].” Lores said HP is also looking at consolidating management tools for PCs and Poly devices.
“They have been selling those customers our PCs and our printers, which we love and we appreci- ate. Now we are saying, ‘We have got to have a different conversation.We have got to have a broader conversation. Every time you touch that customer, think about the lifetime
“Now we are saying, ‘We have got to have a di erent conversation. We have got to have a broader conversation. Every time you touch that customer, think about the lifetime value of that customer.’” — Dave Shull, President, Workforce Services and Solutions Organization, HP
“There is a big opportunity of integrating our PCs and the rest of the videoconferencing technology to deliver better experiences for IT managers because now they want to be able to use the same tools they use to manage PCs to also manage the room. Then the equipment in the room is a PC that controls a bunch of screens and monitors and speakers. They want one common tool to manage that,” he said. A Services-Driven Future When Lores thinks of the ideal channel partner for HP’s future, it’s one that not only sells the vendor’s full portfolio of products, it’s one that also gets behind the vendor’s services push. But Lores knows it will take work to get more partners selling HP’s services, whether that’s managed print services or Device as a Service, among others. “This means a lot of changes for us, we understand.These will require changes for many of our partners, and we are committed to help them to do it,” he said. A key driver for HP’s services business moving forward is Dave Shull, Poly’s former CEO, who joined the vendor with the acquisition as president of the newWorkforce Services and Solu- tions organization. It is now a $4 billion business, mainly thanks to managed print services and Device as a Service.
value of that customer,’” he said. This is music to the ears ofYorktel’s Scaturro, whose company only had a distribution relationship with HP prior to the Poly acquisition. He finds it encouraging that HP not only kept Shull on board but also kept on individual contributors from Poly. Now as Yorktel prepares to join HP’s Amplify program, Sca- turro sees a lot of promise with how the two companies can grow together. “It’s the strength and brand of HP. It’s the financial backing of HP. It’s the customer base and the ability to sell into the HP customer base. Part of it is the lifetime value of the customers of HP that were predominantly transactional, and the ability to move from a transactional business to more of a partner- ship business and moving up the value scale instead of selling products,” he said. As HP seeks to shift more of its business to a services model and become a hybrid work powerhouse at the same time, Lores believes it’s important that he holds regular conversations with the company’s channel partners because “it’s a great way for me to ground myself in reality.” “Those conversations for me are invaluable,” he said. “We need to make sure they have everything they need from us because if they win, HP wins, and that has been our goal.”
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