How not to bleed in a shrinking commodity market
Scale back your sales costs.
Charl Snyman, a senior figure in HP's European PC wing, has left the company, The Channel can reveal. Snyman landed at HP in 1999 as EMEA sales development manager, and rose through the ranks to regional veep for category management at the Printing & Personal Systems (PPS) unit. Sources close to the company claimed HP CEO Meg …
The HP desktop business range, has been reliable and well supported for years. And I've recommended my customers buy them for along time now, but these days they just seem too expensive. I'm not prepared to recommend paying 30% more for HP stuff - particularly when its the same motherboard, and processor and harddrives in a simalr spec'd case from other big brand sellers.
Plus the partner program really gets on my nerves. Ringing me up, pushing selling though distribution in other ways. I'm looking else where. May be the grass is greener.
HP's distribution model is quite complex. There's an obvious divide between consumer/coroporate, and you can only buy consumer boxes through Westcoast from memory.
On the corporate boxes, there are the channel models in stock in distie (top value) and then there are the CTO boxes (top config). There is also, the HP direct boxes, which smash seven colours of crap out of TV pricing, and are only available to HPD and several elite resellers that sign an agreement with the customer and HP at a high level, and predict minimum order quantities etc..
It's complex, but when you know how to navigate the system, is rewarding..
HP PC division has been bleeding for a long time. That is why HP merged the PC and the print division, hoping the good revenues and profits from printers would mask the dismal performance of the PC division.
HP is just reaping what it sows. It does not do any design, development or innovation any more. They just take designs off the shelf of the Chinese manufacturers. HP has been living off its reputation for years, but now it is catching up to them.
Be aware, there is no bottom. While HP continues to ignore its fundamental problems it will be a long, sad inevitable decline to Chapter 11.
Too bad; there are some good people there.