How a content management plan helps HP’s top line and bottom line
Since rolling out an initiative 18 months ago to standardize structured content and store it in a single, universally accessible portal, Hewlett-Packard Co. has reduced costs significantly in a number of areas, Mario Queiroz, vice president of content and product data management for the e-business customer and sales operation, tells Internet Retailer.
Among the benefits:
• HP has reduced the cost of the content management infrastructure in both business and IT operations by 30%;
• The cost of new product introductions has fallen by 56%;
• The company has increased the number of customer catalogs that it can syndicate weekly, meaning that it is easier for customers to shop with HP, by more than 1,000%;
• It saves $3.5 million a year in translating 19 million words into 26 languages;
• Sales force efficiency has increased by 10-15% because sales reps can now find the information they need more quickly.
In addition, the company believes it has benefited from making it easier for customers to find and use information. “If you do a really good job of creating e-procurement catalogs, it’s easier for a customer using the system to buy from you,” Queiroz says. “The buyers find what they’re looking for and there’s no reason for them to search around for another vendor. That capability is beneficial to our top line.”
One of the biggest challenges in creating a standardized database, Queiroz says, was identifying people in the organization who knew the data and how the data should be used. Those staffers included personnel who created and managed the content, IT personnel who implemented the systems that administered the data as well as “people in the business groups who knew the products, the product hierarchy and the go-to-market strategy,” Queiroz says.
The next challenge was convincing them of the benefit of working together toward the goal of content consistency. “It was not difficult to sell the concept of creating the content once and using it many times,” Queiroz says. “But we had to spend a lot of time painting the picture of how they do their work today and how they’ll do it in the future. And there was quite a bit of internal selling to explain what the benefits are and how to achieve those benefits.”
Queiroz also notes that the web was important to implementing and managing a content initiative. Using the web streamlines communications among groups and standardizes procedures without requiring downloading of applications to PCs throughout the company. “An example of the importance of the web is in new product introductions,” Queiroz says. “We used to have to e-mail spreadsheets across the company and make a lot of phone calls. Now we put all the information in one place on the web and everyone has confidence that they’ll know where to find it.”
The content initiative serves 13,000 internal sales and marketing users and manages 1.8 million documents.
Back...
