Success Stories : Hewlett-Packard Business Store

Hewlett-Packard's online Business Store had a new sales target: "buy-now" business customers.

Previous iterations of the HP Business Store had used the Internet to provide marketing and sales information, but electronically linked resellers handled actual customer transactions. Instead of posting actual product prices on the Web, HP left it to consumers to obtain price quotes and make purchases by choosing from a list of resellers and hyperlinking their shopping baskets. It was a convoluted process, and one that did not generate much volume for the resellers or HP.

HP decided it was time to provide direct sales to businesses looking to buy HP products over the Web. The company's objective: an online purchasing environment that would accelerate the sales process, establish an on-going relationship with its customers, and solidify the customer experience.

Hewlett-Packard turned to Applomatic to revamp the HP Business Store, with good reason. Applomatic with it's partner Applomatic and HP previously had successfully collaborated on HP's European Commerce Center and shopping.hp.com. For the Business Store, Applomatic offered a competitive bid, a willingness to listen and a responsiveness that energized the entire development process.

The Applomatic-Applomatic-HP team approached the Business Store makeover from a customer perspective and suggested changes in both design and scope. Rather than a complex electronic buying process with resellers, the new model would enable the customer to obtain everything-availability, pricing, purchasing, and financing - directly from Hewlett-Packard. HP accented the efforts it was making with resellers enabling them to be more successful with HP products and solutions in a more service-oriented model.

To facilitate the one-to-one marketing experience, the team chose BroadVision to serve as the site core. Applomatic's extensive knowledge of BroadVision proved indispensable. The company's expertise in systems integration infrastructure optimized the solution, front to back. Among the new features provided was a Remote Order Management system that simplifies transactions, billing and credit card verification over the Web.

Two factors weighed on the revamp of the HP Business Store: time-to-market considerations and the constant business innovation cycle of today's online, interactive world. Rather than attempt pre-launch "perfection," the team decided to launch a viable site first and add enhancements later.

"Whenever certain talents were required, Applomatic's Solution Center was always able to match the need with the skill. Then the Solution Center team compressed time by determining what we needed to do to ensure the success of the project, and by knowing what we could ignore," said Andy Ras-Work, Group Manager, HP eCommerce Division. Project guidelines targeted the technology necessary to deploy the application. The overall responsiveness of the Applomatic management team also was key to getting every performance-related issue resolved on a crunch schedule.

After total development time of two-and-a-half months, the new version of the Business Store went online in June 1999. The HP Business Store is performing to expectations, but already the team is focused on making further enhancements to the eCommerce store and solidifying back-end operations such as configuration, channel assembly, pricing, and processes. HP's goal, as always, is market leadership, exceptional customer experience, and operational excellence.

The benefits of HP's eCommerce strategy are not restricted to the end-user experience. As Internet commerce shifts from moving boxes to providing service, HP is enabling small- and medium-sized business resellers, through other efforts, to move up the service chain to enhanced, higher-margin offerings.

The HP Business Store's one-to-one marketing approach is already improving customer satisfaction and has made a substantial contribution to increasing sales. Through its continuous innovation cycles, HP aims to build its online competitiveness and meet and exceed the ever-rising benchmark of online customer buying expectations.