HP Business Strategy & HP Strategic Plan Analysis

HP Business Strategy & HP Strategic Plan Analysis

HP Business Strategy: Introduction

Hewlett Packard (HP) is a company that plays a leading role in providing its customers and other businesses with products and services such as IT infrastructure, computing technologies, and solutions (Ghori 120). It also offers global services in imaging, personal computers, printing, and access devices. The company has enlarged its market borders and improved its provision of products and services by coming up with new ideas and inventions. Each year, HP carries out research on the newly available markets, how best to serve its customers and develop its business strategy. The IT firm invests up to about four billion dollars each year for the purpose of research.

It has been able to get into new markets and offer better products and services through its innovative solutions to IT hardware and software, as well as emerging technologies. Over the years, HP has seen significant growth in its market changes that have been accompanied by success in business. This has been due to innovation. In addition, this innovative focus has attracted many other great and successful companies to it. For instance, because of its significant market strength, it was able to merge with Compaq. In 2003, HP came up with methods of getting the best out of investing in IT. This was through the adaptive enterprise strategy that spelled the type of technology and services as well as the practices to be used.

HP Strategy: Industry Analysis

The modern global economy is largely dependent on the Information Technology (IT) industry in driving communication needs as well as providing the much-needed software and hardware products. Needless to say, the IT industry has grown into a giant economic accelerator throughout the world. So to speak, this industry is the most robust in the world today and especially in the industrialized countries. The needs of enterprises and consumers in terms of both insatiable demand and economies of scale have significantly contributed towards the precedent growth of this sector.

The fact that computers and the associated information systems are utilized by all organizations in the contemporary explains why the IT industry is fast on track in accelerating economic growth both at the local and global scale (Grünig 144). For a complete IT industry, several components come into play. It all begins with the computing system, software and hardware development, creation of IT management systems, as well as the study and design of IT knowledge and infrastructure.

There is a growing base of available IT products that have made it possible for both consumers and business enterprises to easily access the much-needed services and products (Hill & Jones 65). Besides, recent years have witnessed a substantial growth of the industry, mainly due to emerging trends in the globalization of the world economy. The characteristics of the IT industry can be identified at a glance due to the outstanding and unique nature of the sector. For instance, the economies of scale are undoubtedly surging in this industry. This is attributed to the fact that the value addition that results from an extra software or hardware product is large and surpasses the marginal cost by far. Hence, the more units produced, the higher the returns.

Secondly, the IT industry relies on the creation, storage, processing, analysis, retrieval, and dissemination of knowledge. In other words, it is knowledge-based, unlike other industries.

HP Strategy: Industry Life Cycle

Any other industry will undergo a series of growth stages in the course of its operations. The first stage in the life cycle of the IT industry is introduction. This is perceived to be the point in time when the initial investments were being made in the industry. For installation, the acquisition of computing knowledge, as well as setting up the needed IT infrastructure, was instrumental at the introductory stage of the industry. In addition, this stage of development was also marked with the offering of new products to the market that required rigorous marketing so that consumers would be knowledgeable about it. Realistically, heavy investments in Research and Development (R&D) took place before IT could be fully-fledged as a fully equipped industry.

In order to remain stable at the introduction stage, the IT industry used the focus strategy to lay more emphasis on the consumers about how the new products (hardware and software) were unique. The industry started by targeting small scale enterprises and a group of customers. The latter are usually known as adopters or innovators in marketing literature. The level of IT marketing that took place during the introductory phase of the industry was initially meant to crea