HP Canada: One year after the merger

Mirroring the events of last May, Compaq and Hewlett-Packard user groups from around the world are meeting together for the first time next week to talk about a merger of their own.

The Europeans have already done it, and according to Dave

Wilson, the president of the Canadian Association of Compaq Users (CANCU), it is likely that joining forces is the way many groups will go.

“”We’ve built a good working relationship with HP as an organization, and are trying to put together programs with other HP user groups,”” he said. “”We had a summit of the different user groups in Canada last fall and have created a coordinating group, bringing it all together under one person at HP. It seems to be working well.””

If the merger for the user groups is similar to that of their parent organizations, they should be ready for a lot of doubts and uncertainty — and a lot of time in the boardroom. Paul Tsaparis, president of HP Canada, said the global company spent one million hours trying to figure out how to work together through the so-called integration office. Tsaparis said it was important to make sure some staff, however, were reserved for their day-to-day roles.

“”We did not burden them with any of the regular process meetings,”” he said. “”Their jobs were continue to focus externally on customers.””

In Canada, HP’s local arm has been recognized by the integration office as the lead country worldwide for its go-to-market strategies and governance practices, several of which have been leveraged by other HP operations.

HP celebrated its one-year anniversary of the Compaq merger on Tuesday when it announced an “”adaptive infrastructure”” strategy, but the new entity officially launched May 7, 2002 when executives announced the combination of product and services roadmaps.

Though the long-term success of the merger is still in question, ITBusiness.ca contacted analyst firms Evans Research and IDC to compare Canadian statistics in HP’s major product areas — desktops, servers, printing and imaging and outsourcing. We also followed up with key Canadian customers and resellers to gauge their impressions of the deal. Finally, we offer comments from an exclusive interview with Paul Tsaparis on various aspects of the merger.

There are no “”grades”” in this special package — they aren’t ours to assign — but this could be considered a sort of mid-term report of the progress the company is making.

–Illustration by Janet Popadiuk

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