Background

Hewlett-Packard recognised that it viewed marketing information in isolation from business transaction information and from advertising. Surveys were highlighting the provision of information as probably the most critical area for improvement among all vendors - HP included.

Challenges

In today’s business environment everybody involved in the distribution of products must have accurate sales and marketing information. Buyers want the information to be customised to their needs and in the format they want - usually electronic rather than hard copy. In addition, information can add value to products: it creates and changes perceptions of what products can do.

Approach

We began by writing a White Paper which set out a vision for communications:

• people should be allowed to choose the information and messages that are meaningful to them
• information should be created once, stored in one place and updated as needed
• information should be consolidated and managed in a central information ‘warehouse’
• clear processes should ensure that creation of and access to information is straightforward throughout
• both the cost and value of information should be measured.
   
  

Following acceptance of this vision, we:

• conducted more than 50 face-to-face interviews with people from HP and the channel
• defined the key information ‘blocks’ that would need to be stored in the warehouse (at this point re-named the ‘information factory’)
• mapped current and potential future information value chains
• assessed the likely changes to various HP organisations – and how, in a decentralised structure, they would come about
• analysed costs, benefits and risks in detail.

We also built a PC-based simulation that showed and captured feedback on current and proposed information flows.

This led to the definition of the detailed content for the information factory and the development of a prototype. Roll-out began in early 1997.

Benefits

Benefits have been in terms of productivity gains from:

• reducing the people involved in creating information for any given product by up to 80%
• reducing the time to create information by up to 80%
• reducing the time field sales staff spend chasing information by up to 50%
• cost savings in agency fees (eg eliminating unnecessary translations, reducing the amount of hard copy literature produced) and shipping costs (moving paper is expensive).

Through VIA’s involvement HP has been able to ensure the right messages reach the right people, in the most appropriate way, and at least cost.