Case study: Hewlett-Packard – Any chance to beat its global competitors?

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2008 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,0, University of applied sciences, Munich, language: English, abstract: HP is an international giant in the information technology industry. The company offers a wide product portfolio from personal computers (PC), notebooks, serves, storage, printers, scanners, and digital camera to IT services. The company features a phenomenal growth history and has developed from a “garage” with a working capital of $538 in 1938 to a leading global provider with $100 billion revenue. However the global competition becomes fiercer today and HP has to face with different competitors in all business segments. Can HP continue its success story and beat the global competitors? This question will be tried to answer in the present study. In this study the internal and external environment factors effecting HP’s business are analyzed. Thereby industry’s economic features and competitive environment, e.g. market segments, market size and growth, trends, competition, and driving forces are studied. Moreover, the SWOT of HP and its biggest global competitors as well as financial performance of HP over the last three business years (2005 – 2007) are analyzed. The diversified business portfolio of HP is evaluated using the Nine Cell Matrix and concrete recommendations for the senior management board of HP are provided. It could be shown that despite fierce competition HP could remain its pole position in the world market. HP is worldwide No. 1 in the printing, PC, and server market and No. 2 in storage business. HP exhibited an impressive financial performance in the last 3 years. For the future HP should intensify strategic alliances and partnerships and boost the acquisition to strengthen competitive capability and to gain market share quickly. The company should follow strategies like rapid expanding into new geography markets, rapid product development and push the product innovation, penetration also in low-end market segments, expanding into online sale and business, and offering complete solution based on broad portfolio in order to meet customer needs. Moreover HP should improve its supply chain management, optimize manufacturing cost, and strengthen the effective marketing and channel partnership to boost the completive strengths.