The competitive reality for most Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) is a constant pressure to grow market share and increase profitability. At Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) OEM, innovation is a top priority, and it helps our partners to be more competitive by reducing testing, support, and operations costs while speeding their time-to-market with a complete portfolio of world-class solutions and support.
We recently sat down with Phillip Cutrone, Vice President and General Manager WW OEM, HPE Servers GBU, Telco and OEM Solutions, and gathered insights on the 4S (Solutions, Services, Supply Chain, Specialists) Ecosystem of HPE OEM. See below some excerpts from our dialogue:
Q: What is HPE OEM’s role in revolutionizing the enterprise world?
A: The question pertains to the term ‘enterprise,’ and according to me, OEM is not just an enterprise, OEM is a set of necessities to delight customers to go to market. Assuming from an OEM perspective; we are revolutionizing simplicity, high quality, distribution capability, and the service capabilities that we offer to OEM customers resulting in trust and confidence to work with the best Tier-1 provider. With that trust, they can focus on their intellectual properties to build brand value and increase their customer base. Therefore to me, revolutionizing is simplifying the supplier base and narrowing it down to a company that can supply solid products, integration work, deployment, shipping, service. We are revolutionizing across the spectrum of the market by delivering tremendous value and confidence.
Q: What are the 4S's? Why this mantra?
A: Sure, first let’s define what an OEM customer looks like. An OEM customer is an establishment that needs excellent IT infrastructure - one that they could trust, one that they can be delivered with continuity, consistency and build the value proposition for their end customers. The 4S’s kind of fits in those requirements as OEMs need high-quality products that can be deployed globally and those products must also be able to modify to their specifications whether that is engineering changes or its variation of the extended life cycle. Thus one of the crucial requirements is to have a great support system for OEM customers. In doing so, we have the whole business wrapped around with a dedicated staff of specialists taking care of OEM customers. Almost all these parameters come together synergistically, the 5th S, as you cannot be successful with one without the other.
Q: Describe what HPE OEM brings to the table with Solutions.
A: In the OEM business, HPE produces technology equipment that is provided to other companies who then make it part of their solution. The solution portfolio is that excellent product experience that I mentioned earlier. HPE OEM Solutions enable innovative businesses of all types and sizes to harness the incredible power of the industry’s most transformative technology. We utilize our decades of expertise in technology, services, supply chain and financial innovations to tailor industry-renowned solutions to our customers’ unique requirements.
Q: Describe what HPE OEM brings to the table with Services.
A: It is vital for our partners to deliver excellent service experiences to their customers. We have excellent support capabilities in the world that they can rely on. When we say global services we mean a customer can buy a product in one country and can ship in another country and HPE will support that process entirely. That is the competency that not every OEM has the ability to deliver. Partners tap into our knowledge, expertise, innovation and world-class services to achieve better results for their enterprise.
Q: Describe what HPE OEM brings to the table with Supply Chain.
A: Supply chain continuity is delivering a product that they can count on everywhere in the world. HPE OEM is continuously seeking innovative ways to improve supply chain visibility and control. To that end, we have invested in a next-generation supply chain management system that ties together logistics providers and suppliers across four continents. The global system improves operations by providing a common repository for order, inventory, and shipment data across the entire supply chain.
Q: Describe what HPE OEM brings to the table with Specialists.
A: The people - or, the specialists – are those who can manage the entire engagement from the front end of sales to the final product. The specialists are from the sales engagement process; these are specific resources that understand OEM, not just smart technologists. We have program managers that help them develop their solution specifications, we craft and create specific build instructions, and even help them with the first level of inspections.
Q: Critical takeaways for partners/customers?
A: Let’s just talk about the solutions portfolio. In the solutions portfolio, the product is leveraged from HPE's broad portfolio and with the best quality in the world. That product just by itself may in some cases meet the OEM requirements, but in many cases, it is the starting point - we take the product, we modify it, and make according to the exact requirement of OEM customers. That means a customer may want specific features added to the product. Maybe they need a different chassy engineered. It might mean variation of the lifecycle - e.g., in healthcare, a matter of life and death is at stake here so therefore testing is critical. Some customers want some optimization around rebranding - they may want their brand exposed, not necessarily the HPE brand. So we have a whole sweep of opportunity for customers to rebrand the product.
In the end, I would say everyone needs a supplier that provides excellent support on a global basis, top quality products at competitive costs and is easy to do business. But, you also need a supplier that understands the unique needs that you have as an OEM, such as advanced notification of lifecycle events, product customization, and third-party integration. To sum up, with HPE OEM, partners get a better product at competitive pricing, which translates to higher profits.
Stay tuned for a series of follow-up blogs from our conversations with HPE OEM Executive Phillip Cutrone.
Audrey Cox
WW OEM Communications & Brand Awareness
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
