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back to article HP Enterprise Services staff feel the burn as managers turn off the cash taps

HP is turning the screws on folk in its Enterprise Services (ES) division to squeeze out overheads in a bid to hit "specific Must Do Numbers" for fiscal '14. On a global basis, ES revenues slipped seven per cent year-on-year in Q2 (May quarter) to $5.7bn and profit before tax was flat at $144m - the figures are not broken down …

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  1. Khaptain Silver badge

    Quick Win

    The first stage in cost reduction should be the interdiction of expenses at the Directors level.

    Most people would be appauled to learn what goes on those "personal expense" forms. No, it's not just the govt ministers that play that game.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Quick Win

      For most customers the quickest win is to start planning now to bring their work back in house at the end of the contract.

      Our group board signed up with HP a couple of years back and there are no polite words to describe how poor the service has been - but because their sales & legal people spend all day every day writing agreements, they can run rings around our (or any) procurement team who prepare an outsource IT deal either never before, or at most once every five years. As a result we find HP have a cop-out when the frequently don't meet the SLA terms, and it now costs us more for a worse service, getting anything done takes forever, and whenever something needs changing, the only sound is "ker-ching" as HP chalk up another highly profitable variation.

      I say a pox on HP's managers and investors. Ideally a really nasty pox like Ebola.

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      1. Tony S
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        Re: Quick Win

        For 18 months, I worked at a place that had outsourced much of their IT services to HP; and I was utterly astonished that the company was still using them despite the total lack of anything approaching a half decent function. I don't think that HP even pretended to be meeting any of their SLAs; and the cost was eye wateringly high for a very second rate performance.

        This plan to reduce head count, cut costs etc is guaranteed to make the situation worse; and no doubt, they will demand yet another increase for their appalling service next year. Quite simply, I think that I could provide better by employing a load of 14 year old kids, straight out of school.

        I think that Ebola is too good for the managers; although I do have some sympathy for the staff who must now be wondering how quickly they can find alternative employment.

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      2. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Quick Win

        This all happened post Compaq-EDS 'mergers'. I saw the change in culture at first hand and it stank. (Still does)

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      4. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Quick Win

        That's exactly the same as is happening at UK big 6 energy supplier at the moment. It kills me that critical incidents that took minutes to fix before now take hours and often with no feedback as to what was broken or how. All the good and knowledgeable staff that tuped over have been made redundant and we are left with a poor service at best and no service at worst because all that knowledge has gone.

        I'm surprised our business is still running, because its not through any help from HP!

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cost-cutting is not the answer...

    It may give senior managers (I refuse to call them 'leaders' because they're not) a short-term way of pretending that they're making their numbers but you cannot cut forever. At some point fairly soon HPES will have to fix the underlying problems...

    "people managers" will be asked to "invite staff members to take additional days unpaid leave" - that'll do wonders for morale...

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Get rid of the frigging Managers

    and let the people on the ground do their job. Things might get better is the so called 'managers' didn't try to micro-manage everything their teams do 24/7 (except when they are on the Golf Course with their buddies that is).

    Like others who have commented, their service in the main is total and utter crap and mind numbingly expensive for what you get.

    Shame really because they inherited service organisations who would not hesitate to 'do what was right' for the customer. Then the HP Bean counters (MBA's by the score) got to work and the rest is history.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Get rid of the frigging Managers

      We did exactly this some years ago at HP, the group I was working in became an experimental "Self-Managing Team". Overall it worked really well, too well infact - I think many of the mid-level managers felt threatened by our success and various "excuses" were put forward to end the trial and go back to the status quo. Productivity, effectiveness and morale, which had all improved during the trial quickly fell back once we were once again "managed".

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    For 2 years, ineptitude and cash sucking from HP

    Have replaced all our internal reasonably competent IT staff with a Tandoori HelpLESS desk from hell that cannot organise how to put out a burning bag of dog poo!

    Their answer to almost every user problem is "we need to reload your PC"....FFS!

    The IT staff we had that were sucked into HP are smarter, and quit and found new jobs so they'll not get caught up in a.n.other round of idocy where the HP managers will keep their kushy jobs!

    #FriendsDon'tLetFriendsBuyHP......

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  5. John G Imrie

    New headline

    Profitable company starts futile round of cost cutting in order so satisfy investors irrational demand for perpetual growth.

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  6. Mike Smith
    FAIL

    Alarm bells

    "An HP spokeswoman sent us a statement: "These short-term initiatives are all part of our global transformation..."" </flatulence>

    Morale-damaging parsimony deflected by canned PR crap could point to a company that's in serious trouble.

    I've been employed by three organisations that have resorted to doing this. If HP follow the same path, the next step in Project Panic the 'Make It Better' campaign will be a top-down focus in getting as much money in as they can. Whether they call it de-rippling the revenue streams, delivering a negative customer credit paradigm, or just chasing every penny they're owed, the underlying reason will be the same - a huge fiscal hole that they're finding it increasingly difficult to hide, but which is bringing them very close to trading while insolvent.

    And if that happens - well, two of the three organisations that I worked for that did that crashed and burned quite spectacularly. The third was part of a larger group and only survived because it was bailed out by the other parts.

    No names, no pack drill, but I won't be buying HP any time soon.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Alarm bells

      It is starting to look a bit ominous for HP Enterprise Services.

      Perhaps it will be similar to the third organisation you mentioned where it survives through being bailed out by the wider HP.

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  7. Nick Woodruffe
    FAIL

    Oh dear...

    Over the last ten years I have watched the quality of HP laptops drop. Everything is now so flimsy and the internal hardware is likely to break at the sneeze over the keyboard.

    Every batch of 30 laptops that we order will have at least one DOA upon delivery. Getting HP to take that one away and give us a replacement is like trying to get blood out of a stone. We have had engineers arrive (eventually) to replace the motherboard in a week old laptop.

    Our servers are HP in a blade chassis and thankfully this gear is still excellent but it seems to be the only product I would recommend. Just steer clear of their laptops.

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    1. ToddR
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      Re: Oh dear...

      Stop buying their laptops ?

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    An ex-hp resource writes.

    Some genuine questions for all of the posters who are complaining about how awful it is working at HP.

    Why are you still there ? Is the Expression Of Wish still going ? Does it look like the company is turning around? Have you had a pay rise recently in return for doing excellent work?

    I'll repeat the first question because I think it is really important. Why. Are. You. Still. There? You only get one life, why spend it working for a company that doesn't deserve it?

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: An ex-hp resource writes.

      Some answers:

      Is Expression of Wish still going? Yes.

      Does it look like the company is turning around? Things seem less bad than they were but it varies across the company. ES is having a tough time.

      Have you had a pay rise recently in return for doing excellent work? No; pay rises have been thin on the ground in recent years.

      Why are you still there? People stay for differing reasons; some are waiting to take copper-bottomed pensions, for some it's 'better the devil you know', some don't want the upheaval of moving jobs and some lack the ambition to move on.

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