SHANGHAI, CHINA--Following Hewlett-Packard's introduction of its Print 2.0 strategy last year, the company recently rolled out an expanded portfolio for enterprise customers and small and midsize businesses (SMBs).
HP was the leading provider of both inkjet and laser printers shipped to SMBs in the Asia-Pacific region with a 45 percent market share in the fourth quarter of last year. It also led the laser printer market share with 53.8 percent of unit shipments and the company shipped one million laser printers in the first quarter of 2008, according to HP Asia-Pacific senior vice president, Imaging and Printing Group (IPG) Asia-Pacific Chris Morgan.
Speaking to journalists at "Business Go Print"in Shanghai, Morgan said that to position for continued leadership, HP would further drive its Print 2.0 strategy to accelerate the growth and customer benefits.
The Print 2.0 strategy encompasses enhanced solutions to automate, streamline and secure customer workflow; flexible purchase models, including managed service offerings; in-house marketing opportunities; better visibility to optimize and manage output environments; Web-enabled printing ecosystems as well as in-depth customer engagement and greater partner capabilities.
HP senior vice president, Global Enterprise Business, IPG, Bruce Dahlgren, noted that HP had invested in people, partnerships and portfolios as these three factors were essential to global enterprise business. "And now we will continue to add more in three steps," he said, noting that those were optimizing print infrastructure, managing output environment and improving information workflows with specialized solutions.
To optimize infrastructure, Dahlgren said two new high performance multi-function devices, the HP Color LaserJet CM6040 series and the LaserJet M9040/M9050 series were "enablers" that allowed customers to start their Print 2.0 plan by acting as both the "on-ramp" and "off-ramp" for digitizing workflow and improving communications.
To help explain the newly-announced offerings, HP demonstrated operations, showing the streamlining of output management and workflow through its controlled-cost printing product that allows enterprises to manage, track and recover costs for printing usage through multiple types of billings.
It also showed its account opening product claimed to improve information workflow for companies such as banks, telecommunications firms and utilities as well as its output management offering that enables enterprises to streamline document and information workflow.
HP has also introduced a new Office Printing Channel program, which is designed to help qualified partners grow sales revenue and profitability through increased access to HP's entire imaging and printing portfolio.
Asked whether print shops or print service providers would be affected by HP's approach with in-house marketing of printing opportunities, Bruce noted that print shops would not become obsolete, but would change their business models and there would be more competition in some of those environments.
"Print 2.0 is more created by the Web and we help customers to be able to optimise and manage their output environment for the lowest cost," he said, adding that the company had tried to help customers with their businesses.
SMBs are another key focus area for HP, as the SMB printing area presents a tremendous opportunity for HP's IPG valued at US$103 billion globally by 2010 and the company estimates the in-house marketing opportunity will be around US$40 billion by 2010.
HP Asia-Pacific vice president, Commercial Printing, IPG, Herbert Koeck, noted that there was enormous growth of SMBs in the region.
HP has selected three specific areas in which to address SMBs, being an increase in marketing effectiveness, to help SMBs better manage their businesses and to improve their productivity.
The company has launched more than 25 new printing products including new Web-based printing tools, colour printers and multifunction devices (MFDs). HP has expanded its range of in-house marketing tools by offering In-house Marketing Starter Kit, HP Colour Expertise Centre, HP Print View software and Print Cost Estimator to empower SMBs to increase their marketing effectiveness and manage their printing fleet with new tools and online resources.
Chris noted that the success of HP's Print 2.0 has been proved by the increased number of new customers and another indication that the strategy was right was that the growth of HP's managed printing services had increased by 78 percent. That meant that the market hadaccepted the Print 2.0 strategy.
He added that HP's acquisitions of a number of graphics and Web companies, such as Extream was also an indicator that HP's strategy was right.
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