Anticipating the NEXT WAVE 

HEWLETT Packard is among the top tech companies with women and underrepresented minorities in executive positions. Some 30 per cent of HP executives are women.
In Thailand, two women lead the two major business units of HP, including PCs and printers. They are Varanit Athijaratroj, country category manager of print and Pattariya Pattarakorn, country category manager of personal systems. 
Pattariya said the company applies mega trends to shed light on the demands of future consumers and employees, and identify future areas of growth – all to help propel businesses into a new era of productivity, innovation and economic opportunity. 
The company’s approach is to meet users’ needs through a variety of innovations. Much of these centre on workers’ desire for freedom of movement and to work from wherever they want, whenever they want. 
“We are succeeding in our focus on innovation, which is evident by the delivery of continued growth in areas such as PC, print and services, as well as emerging growth areas like VR and 3D printing,” said Pattariya.
The overview of HP’s strategy and PC innovation is focused on three areas – core, growth and future. 
“Our innovation strategy is completely aligned with making lives better through technology for everyone, everywhere. It is about developing solutions that are relevant to our customers’ needs and addressing them in an era of constant change,” said Pattariya.
HP’s PC gaming segment is a huge growth area. With its reinvention of the entire Omen portfolio – from design and form-factor to engineering and performance – it aims to help gamers dominate the game, to be the best they can possibly be and to let nothing hold them back from their personal goals. “Designed with security in mind, HP offers hardware enforced, self-healing, manageable solutions to protect, detect and recover from cyberthreats and attacks,” said Pattariya. “These solutions include the HP SureSence, HP Sure Recover and HP Sure Start that provide holistic protection that can help increase security, minimise downtime and prevent costly security breaches.”
The reinvention is “increasing the connected mobile workforce and [attracting the] younger demographics and is also a call-out on design to address the local Thai market needs. HP’s reinvention design is exemplified across our PC’s with an all-premium line-up,” she added.
Meanwhile, both virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies have the potential to grow with commercialisation with boarding width network. HP offers a unified commercial approach for VR, to help businesses reduce concept to production cycle times, improve training procedures and deliver fully immersive customer experiences.
HP workstations are also used in designing 3D models, creating sophisticated CGI and VR models. Workstation-based VR consumption platforms include the new Z VR.
The use cases for VR include military field training and simulation in dangerous environments, design visualisation to shorten development cycles and healthcare, where it could be used during medical procedures to improve realism in critical fields.

Business of transformation
Varanit said the three main priorities for the company’s print business include reigniting the home, disrupting the office, and transforming graphics. 
Underpinning the priorities are two main factors that are informing their business plans moving forward – design matters and service business models.
Beginning with Tango, HP has completely upended its approach to designing printers for both the home and the office. They have also fundamentally changed the functionality of printers to become much “smarter” and app-based devices.
HP has developed a new product called HP Neverstop. Aimed at emerging markets, this is a syringe-based refill device whereby customers can re-fill their own ink and toner at a lower cost, thereby blunting the negative impact of the clone market. 
For the SMB market, HP is offering OfficeJet Pro & Jet Advantage with the “Smart Task” feature, aimed to solve the productivity needs of many small businesses. 
Then there are the JetAdvantage printers for the enterprise level, and the fact that there are over 200 developers working on apps to improve workflow and other needs of major commercial enterprises. 
“We are reinventing our business for new ways to think about printing and to realise the opportunity for print in the future. We are bringing disruptive technologies that enable today’s workforce and capture more printed pages,” said Varanit.
Other potential strategic initiatives and offerings for the commercial and home-user space include managed print services, digitisation opportunities and security.
“We are focused on technologies for home-users that are designed for our mobile, digital and social lives in mind, to reinvent memories that can be shared and held onto,” said Varanit. 
Recently, the company launched a marquee project, the HP Print Subscription, in Thailand. It’s the first model of its kind from HP available in Southeast Asia region and follows a simple three-step process. 
The project is targeted at procurement managers focused on cost optimisation, office managers driven by always-on efficiency and productivity and business managers keen on long-term, sustainable business investments.
This allows SMBs to get customised, affordable, convenient and flexible access to printing based on their specific business needs without an up-front investment in the cost of an office printer. 
And to address lifestyle photography, Varanit points to the launch of the HP Sprocket and Sprocket Plus, which has allowed the company to reinvent what people are capable of creating through personalised printing.
“We’re helping our customers reinvent photo-taking, reinvent connections and reinvent memories. Sprocket app enables our customers to scan, copy, send and print – all straight from a mobile device. 
“The app also enables our customers to customise their favourite memories with frames, stickers, phrases and more. We’re constantly pushing new features live to the app, further driving the personalisation features,” said Varanit.