HP's good news: the technology company's Asia-Pacific Enterprise News Service consolidates information, providing better communication and saving money to boot.

In 2003, the enterprise sales force in Hewlett-Packard's Asia-Pacific (AP) region found itself inundated with information. More than 650 HP products had been introduced in the previous year, and with those new products had come new specifications, prices, features and packages. Critical information was not well timed, coordinated or targeted through the technology company's primary existing communication channels--e-newsletters sent via e-mail to sales representatives. Consequently, the sales team was overwhelmed and underserved.

Different business units, product teams and functions were producing more than 35 of these electronic communications, with information often being duplicated at worldwide, regional and country levels. To keep up with all of HP's product offerings, salespeople needed to read as many as two dozen of the e-newsletters, some of which came out weekly, some monthly and still others quarterly. Few salespeople had the time, though, and as a result they were not always able to draw together and present the full power of the HP portfolio to their customers.

A task force spearheaded by the AP internal communication department recognized that the region's 2,400 salespeople could be more successful if they received timely, coordinated information from a single source. The company's marketing and product communication teams, which were producing the e-newsletters, needed a faster, less expensive way to get information to the right audience and to maintain control over their content.

The solution was the AP Enterprise News Service, a customized, web-based, one-to-one marketing program developed primarily for two audiences: the 2,400 sales people in HP's AP region, and the business unit marketing and product communication teams that were generating the e-newsletters.

ObJectives

The primary objectives of the AP Enterprise News Service were:

* Improve field knowledge of the full HP enterprise portfolio.

* Consolidate the e-newsletters intelligently so that the sales force would have one trusted source for enterprise news, product information and sales resources--the consolidation could not just replace multiple e-newsletters with one that was 12 times longer. The solution also had to reduce the cost and effort of producing multiple newsletters.

* Enable salespeople to customize the internal news they receive via e-mail.

* Remove the production bottlenecks inherent in the e-newsletters so that breaking news could be included within a few hours of each edition's publication.

* Introduce weekly editions so there would be minimal delay in news dissemination.

* Ensure that the resulting output complies with HP's visual brand identity.

* Implement metrics that would allow AP'S internal communication team to track subscription preferences, usage and readership.

* Grow revenue for the AP region.

Solution and implementation

The AP Enterprise News Service lets subscribers create personal profiles based on their jobs, geographic areas, customer segments, and HP solutions and products of interest. After signing up, subscribers receive a customized weekly news bulletin. Although the subscription process is easy to complete, a video tutorial is available to anyone who needs guidance.

Submitting news is equally simple. Content owners--typically the product and marketing teams--cut and paste copy into a web page and tick boxes to indicate which job roles, geographic areas, customer segments, and HP solutions and products are discussed in their stories. A report is generated automatically after every edition to show them which subscribers received their articles.

Business unit managers and sales and marketing executives in the region provided vital input during the functional design phase, helping the internal communication team determine that Asian cultural values required a personalized e-mail news solution--most employees in the region are accustomed to being "told" about important news via a push message, rather than looking for the information themselves (for example, on an intranet).

Content owners were also included in the process. Some felt that they had been "winning" the internal competition for the attention of the sales force, and were reticent to integrate their content with that provided by other content owners. To convince them of the merits of the plan, the internal communication team conducted focus groups that clearly showed the content owners that the salespeople wanted a more integrated approach.

The AP Enterprise News Service was launched in August 2003. The team publicized the service and the video tutorial with a feature on the intranet, and promoted them via direct e-mail to salespeople, who were automatically subscribed to all topics. The tutorial and detailed instructions in the e-mail helped salespeople customize their profiles with their specific areas of interest. Prizes were offered to those who customized their profiles within the first week. A significant expansion of the AP Enterprise News Service to include information and subscribers from HP's Services businesses took place in April 2004.

HP's regions often have to work with fewer resources and limited budgets--in this case just US$15,000. The AP region's internal communication team completed the project on time and on budget.

Measurement and evaluation

In the 2004 AP Employee Communication Survey, about 90 percent of the sales force reported that the service was "important" and "effective" in increasing their knowledge of HP's product portfolio. The AP region's revenues increased 13 percent from fiscal year 2003 to 2004, despite increased competition and pricing pressure.

More than 35 of the regionally produced e-newsletters that preceded the AP Enterprise News Service were consolidated or discontinued. In addition to the 2,400 salespeople originally targeted, the service attracted subscribers from non-sales functions, and, by the end of 2004, the News Service had more than 3,000 subscribers. The cost savings that resulted from consolidating or discontinuing other e-newsletters paid for the project in two months, and the program continues to save HP more than US$6,000 a month.

By the end of 2004, the News Service could claim some other impressive statistics as well: One hundred percent of the target audience tailored their subscription preferences to their needs (approximately 70 percent chose to remain subscribed to all topics and scan through them for news of interest). And, in an average week, 54 percent of readers open and read through their selected stories, with readership scores in some countries exceeding 90 percent.

Peter Ekstedt is region employee communications manager for Hewlett-Packard Asia-Pacific and Japan.