A Dynamic System for Improving Performance - Essay Example

The company developed a one-car garage in Palo Alto by Dave Packard and William Hewlett. For such a reason, HP has become the world’s leading Personal Computer manufacturer since 2007 fending off the stiff challenge of Chinese manufacturer Lenovo (Reading, 2004). This paper will focus on three of its business units namely Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking (ESSN), Personal Systems Group (PSG), and HP Software, HP Financial Services (HPFS).

The ESSN business unit concentrates on the provision of servers, storage as well as networking products within a range of categories.

Such an integrated solution comes in handy in enabling clients within the enterprise and service department the delivery infrastructure platforms in technology. This means that the Industry Standard Servers develop the basic entry-levels as well as ProLiant servers (mid-range) that run Windows, Novell, and Linux operating systems and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Intel Corporation (Intel) processors (Pham-Gia, 2009). The overall business spans of this scope of the product line include the pedestal-tower servers as well as the density-optimized rack servers within the BladeSystem family of HP in terms of the server blades.

The PSG business unit provides calculators, commercial personal computers, workstations, consumer PCs, and related accessories, services, and software for the consumer and commercial markets. The unit collects commercial workstations, commercial notebooks, and desktops into consumer notebooks and commercial clients and consumer desktops for their clients. The main products of these elements include Commercial PCs such as the HP EliteBook and the HP ProBook lines of notebooks. Also, there are Compaq Elite, Compaq Pro, HP Elite, and HP Pro lines of business desktops coupled with the HP Mini-Note PCs, retail POS systems, Omni and TouchSmart PCs, HP Slate Tablet and HP Thin Clients PCs (House & Price, 2009). The HPFS business unit supports HP's service and product solutions on a global scale towards providing a comprehensive scope of financial management services in its life cycle. The HPFS is an enabler of worldwide customers in the acquisition of IT solutions such as hardware, software, and services. This means that the Company will offer financing, leasing, and utility programs coupled with asset recovery services in terms of financial asset management services to enterprise and global customers. HPFS also avails a wide array of specialized financial services to SMBs and governmental and educational entities.
One of the strengths of Enterprise Servers, Storage, and Networking (ESSN) is that the economy of the world keeps growing steadily every year. For this reason, such growing economies come in handy in accelerating corporate expenditure where HP is positioned to continue benefiting. The business unit has in turn increased the levels of investments in the global markets while still expanding the product as well as service offerings with special regard to its enterprise services and business divisions. The divisions provide most products on a profitable scale for cloud computing services as well as enterprise solutions.

However, a major weakness of Personal Systems Group (PSG) is that strategic expansion into diverse markets could result in stronger competition against the products of the business in the future (Pham-Gia, 2009). This is based on the fact that the unit heavily depends on the sales of PC, majorly laptops. The PC market has matured and there are expectations of growing slowly and even encountering a sudden decline in a few years. The combination of this with the continuously decreasing margins for the computer hardware products which are the company’s largest Personal Systems division turns out to be a shortcoming for the unit.

An opportunity for HP Software, HP Financial Services (HPFS) is expanding its services across more enterprise solutions divisions. The business provides various services such as catering for users of cloud infrastructure and security as well as enterprise solutions such as storage, networking, and servers that are part of the most profitable business. The unit needs to focus on the growth of divisions while promising increased levels of growth opportunities coupled with higher profit margins. The main threat for these business units is based on the fact that other tech companies continue encountering rapid technological change (House & Price, 2009). Such company business units are constantly under pressure of releasing new products faster. Those who cannot be in a position of keeping up with competition encounter failure. Such an element is normally a threatening component for HP as it is already falling behind its rivals with regard to quality, technological advancement, and price of most of its products. Read More