Fall 2006: Technology

Mark Hurd is Chief Executive Officer, President and Chairman of HP’s Board of Directors. He’s an alumnus of Baylor’s Hankamer School of Business. HP is a technology solutions provider for consumers, businesses and institutions globally. The company’s offerings are in IT infrastructure, global services business and home computing, imaging, and printing. With over 150,000 employees and one billion customers worldwide, last year’s revenues totaled $91.7 billion. Earlier this year, Hurd was given the Baylor Business Legend award from the Houston Baylor Business Network.

Baylor University

Q1. Tell us a little bit about your Baylor experience and how it shaped you.

I came to Baylor on a tennis scholarship. I carried a full academic load and was in a fraternity. I think all of that – carrying the academic load, being a scholarship athlete, trying to be part of a fraternity – taught me the value of time and organization. I didn’t have a lot of time. I had a lot of things I wanted to get done while I was there, and it caused me to learn to discipline myself. Frankly, my days at Baylor were not too different from my days as part of a company. I had to manage my time. I had to divide it into certain pieces so that I’d get as much done as I possibly could. And I had to have the discipline to stay focused on the most important things that needed to get done.

Q2. Do any professors or programs stick out in your mind as being influential on your career?

While at Baylor, I had a professor who had a positive influence on me. Dr. Clifton Williams taught a course on leadership and management and spent a lot of time talking about the difference between the two. We discussed the importance of developing people to become leaders and about the importance of leader’s role in aligning an organization to execute against a plan. What I learned from Dr. Williams has stuck with me 27 years later and I would argue that he has been one of the most profound influences on my career.

Q3. How did you get started in you career?

Coming out of Baylor, I interviewed on my own, and I took a job as a frontline salesperson. I began by selling computers to anybody who would buy them. I think it was good for me to begin in a sales function because I got the opportunity to work directly with customers from the start. To be successful, I had to really understand the customers and their needs. I had to have a deep knowledge of my products and a solid understanding of our competitors. I learned some pretty important lessons in those first years as a front line sales person.

Q4. In the beginning, were there any specific events that formed your leadership style and career priorities?

I learned a couple of lessons quickly from my first boss, a company veteran and the district sales manager. After my very first sale, which I was pretty proud of, I learned I had filled out the order wrong and was told by a billing person to go back to the customer and re-do the form before we could fill the order. He told me I had used the ‘wrong hierarchy’ for the billing form and sent me away. When my boss asked me how my first customer call went, I told him with a sigh, ‘wrong hierarchy’. After explaining what I thought was a failure on my part, he quickly picked up the phone and called that billing manager and told him that HE was to fix this problem, immediately, not me nor our customer. And, that when I came down there to give him the order form back, he should stand up, shake my hand and thank me for keeping him employed. This lesson concluded with my boss telling me, “next time do it right”.

Twenty-five years later, I still remember the importance he placed on staying focused on the fundamentals and especially the customer. That it’s important not to let internal processes or bureaucracy distract from the basics of how a business ought to run.

When you get to the scale of HP, it’s easy to get lost in the sheer size and complexity of the company and forget about the fundamentals, the things that really make companies succeed: building great products, selling those products and offering services around them. And, at the same time, keeping a sharp focus on what customers say they need and want.

HP

Q5. What brought you to HP?

HP is a great company. It’s one of the great American business stories of our time. It is the original Silicon Valley startup. HP is a company that has historically seeded the valley and, frankly, the business world with a whole generation of entrepreneurs and leaders running some of America’s great companies today. HP is credited with inventing some of the great business practices you read about in business school like management by walking around, management by objective, flex time, and catastrophic health insurance for their employees. This company was expanding globally in the 1950s and was the first high-tech company to set up operations in China in the mid 1980s. Today, Hewlett-Packard is not just a global business; it’s the largest information technology company in the world. For me, the company has a great legacy, great people, and fantastic technology. In so many ways, this is a company worth working on and a company worth working hard for.

Q6. What inspires you about the HP culture?

HP was a company born in a garage in Silicon Valley in 1939. Bill Hewlett and David Packard built their first products in their garage, took them to market, and really built the company step by step from there. They created a performance-oriented culture from the very beginning. They built their reputation on world class products, great customer and employee relationships; and a culture of giving back to the communities where they do business. They valued their people and their customers. Their values and uncompromising integrity are still things that attract employees to the company today. And working as part of a company with such an important history motivates me to make sure we continue to deliver against this legacy. The employees of HP are talented people with a strong will to win and an incredible desire to please customers.

And the scale of HP, a Fortune 11 company, makes my job challenging and rewarding at the same time. HP has approximately 150,000 employees in 170 countries. We ended fiscal 2006 with about $91.7 billion in revenue. Our technology runs the world’s top 200 banks, 25 insurance companies and hundreds of the largest stockbroker firms on the planet among many other things. We have a $55 billion supply chain. The company shipped over 50 million printers last year; more than 30 million PCs; 2 million industry standard servers, and we have almost a billion customers that touch HP products world wide. It’s an enormous undertaking every day just to be sure we’re continuing to get it all right and answering to the many customers who depend on us and who are looking for us to lead.

Q7. What are the complexities that go along with running a company the size of HP?

Complexity in a company is not created by scale. The difference between running a company with $1 billion worth of revenue versus $91 billion of revenue isn’t nearly as significant as running a global company and a company with very distinct business groups and offerings.

Being truly global creates complexity. Doing business in China, doing business in India, doing business in France, doing business in the U.S. – in 170 countries – means intricate operational processes and a sound understanding of the marketing, cultural differences, exchange rates and regulations in every place we do business.

Having multiple businesses also creates complexity. At HP, each separate business has its own business model with different investment needs, different trajectories and different market structures that are competing. At the same time, we’ve got to be able to allocate resources and priorities across all of those businesses to optimize the total answer for HP.

Q8. In your first year at HP, you have done a lot of realigning. What are your major strategic goals?

We realigned the company to try to eliminate matrices at every turn. We want to push responsibility and accountability as low in the organization as we possibly can and get it as close to the customer as we possibly can.

We also want to shrink the layers of management. When I started at HP there were too many layers of management between the customer and the CEO. There are still too many layers but we’re making improvements. Matrices and layers create too much complexity and can slow an organization down which takes away from the customer experience. So by simplifying that, we gain speed and responsiveness.

We are working hard to streamline our operating model to try to raise accountability in the company. At the same time, we are actually spending money to save money. We are driving towards a lower cost structure by transforming our IT infrastructure and by consolidating and streamlining our real estate portfolio over the coming years. These actions to reduce our cost structure allow us to become more competitive in the market. I’m a firm believer that if you have too much cost, you won’t grow.

So, in a nutshell, we’re trying to decrease our cost structure, increase our accountability, improve our ability to go to market, make sure we stay focused on technology, and build the best customer service organization on the planet.

Q9. What are some of the challenges HP faces doing business in a global economy?

We are operating against a global economic backdrop that many of us are seeing for the first time in our lives. We’re sitting with an economy in the U.S. that’s growing between three and four percent in GDP and with markets like China and India growing at exponentially faster GDP rates. And, IT spending grows even faster than the overall GDP in these markets.

HP is growing in every market in which we operate. My job is to capitalize on all the changes in our disparate marketplaces – changes in IT and engineering education, increasingly rapid adoption of IT and evolving customer needs. By leveraging the distinct characteristics in each of these economies and marrying the assets of our company, we ought to be able to put HP in the best possible position to serve our global customers.

Q10. When you took the reigns at HP, you made it a priority to meet with as many customers as possible. What did that teach you?

Yes. I actually met with hundreds in the first three months, and I’ve met with thousands more since then. One statement I can make is that I’ve never seen a company whose customers really want to see it win more than HP. The respect they have for the people of HP is really incredible. I also learned that while HP is a great technology and engineering company, it could be a lot better from a sales perspective. Now, we know we still have work to do from an account management and a customer relationship perspective. We believe if you show up for business with a customer, you actually get more business. Something like 23% of the time, we didn’t even call on a customer when there was business to be earned. This is unacceptable, and as I said, not focusing on the fundamentals. Also, we’re focused on making sure we have the right people to cover the right accounts. For example, with our 200 largest customers, we’re doing an evaluation process to make sure we are meeting their needs. We need to be having the right level of conversations with these customers from the get go. We need to operate more like a CIO’s strategic partners rather than simply selling what’s in the catalog to their procurement department. We will build the HP sales force into the World’s best sales force. We know that is hard work and it’s going to take time, but that’s what customers say they want from us, and that’s what we’re going to give them.

Leadership

Q11. In your opinion, what is the difference between a manager and a leader?

The definition of managers in my mind is someone who says, “I have a hand. I’m going to optimize the hand that I’ve been given.” Leaders actively change the hand to drive the business. Leaders make change where they see it is needed and actively develop the talent they have on their teams. I think the ultimate mark of leadership is to say, “Here’s where I’m going to go,” and to go put a plan together to get there and get it done. I think people want that leadership, they want to be developed, they want to know what to do. They want to have clear objectives; they want to understand what they did right, what they did wrong and what they can do. In other words, I think leaders actually have to lead. Leading is not just about managing people. To lead, you have to help people understand where we’re trying to take the company and what their role is in getting it there.

Q12. What makes a great leader?

I think it’s all the things I’ve mentioned: being able to clearly communicate about where you want to take the team; knowing who and what it will take to get you there, and building a plan for the team to work against to get you there together. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard were great leaders – truly visionary before their time while also leading by example and being accessible to everyone in their company. They didn’t just manage their people; they rolled up their sleeves and went every step of the way with them to build one of the world’s great companies.

They built their company from nothing. They started with basically no money; there wasn’t “venture capital” at the time. This was “do whatever was necessary to fund the company and grow it.”

I have tremendous respect for what they accomplished and how they led this company through several decades and stages of growth. I work hard every day to help HP get where it wants to be and to ensure we’re training the next generation of leaders who will continue to build and grow this company into one that is truly the best it can be.

 

 

Baylor Business Review, Fall 2006

New graduates who majored in Information Systems rake in one of the top starting salaries for undergraduate degrees, according to the Summer 2006 National Association of Colleges and Employers Salary Survey. A graduate with an information systems degree starts at an average annual salary of $45,724.

Students looking for an exciting career in information systems technology need to look no further than the Information Systems department at the Hankamer School of Business.With a challenging and cutting edge curriculum maintained by world-class faculty and an advisory board comprised of information systems executives, Baylor business students can expect to learn the latest technical skills, as well as fundamental project management, communication, programming and quantitative skills needed to join the emerging technology workforce. Information Systems gives students hands-on experience with systems that help organizations and people communicate, systems that automate business processes and collect information, and systems that enhance organizational decision making. State-of-the-art courses include work in object oriented programming, modern programming languages, advanced systems development methodologies, telecommunications and the Internet, electronic business concepts and database technologies.

The Information Systems Department at Baylor encompasses information systems, quantitative business analysis and business communication. Degrees are offered at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Undergraduate IS majors have two tracks to choose from:Management Information Systems and Accounting Information Systems.

The Management Information Systems track builds technical skills with a theoretical, hands-on, and project-based curriculum. Students pursuing the MIS track master the latest technologies and understand system developmen basics. Students will be assets in the current business environment and will have skills that will enable them to master the latest technical trends.

Accounting Information Systems track graduates will be able to help bridge the gap existing in organizations between the IT function and the accounting function. Technology provides the infrastructure to collect, analyze, compile, and disseminate accounting information. The emergence of new technologies, real-time data, and the creation of international electronic standards for transmitting financial information electronically (i.e. XBRL) requires a new type of professional that can integrate accounting and information systems functions. With Sarbanes-Oxley’s strict reporting requirements this professional skill mix is in demand and growing. It will experience increased growth as federal legislation such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act imposes strict requirements on accounting and financial data.

At the graduate level, students may choose from two tracks of study to complete the Master’s of Science in Information Systems (MSIS) degree. The Management Information Systems track offers students the more traditional MIS degree while the newly created Information Security track focuses on training students to become leaders in the information security field.

Information Systems students are placed in internships and in challenging professional positions with top companies such as Accenture, Microsoft, Ernst,Protiviti, JPMorgan Chase, USAA,Exxon Mobile, Applied Materials and SunGard Consulting.

Our graduates competently perform in careers such as: Web designer, telecommunications specialist, database coordinator, software engineer, project manager, systems analyst, information technology auditor, financial information systems consultant, internal auditor, systems security specialist, chief information officer, Corporate e-learning consultants, e-learning trainers and human resource project management consultants.

For more information about all majors that the Information Systems department has to offer, please visit: www.baylor.edu/business/isy

 

 

Baylor Business Review, Fall 2006

by Kristin Todd

In today’s rapidly evolving business world, it is essential for companies to harness technological innovation to better serve society and consumers’ needs. That is exactly Greg Leman’s vision for his Technology Entrepreneurship class. With a class consisting of multidisciplinary students, project teams are assigned a company to collaborate with in order to market new technology, test its feasibility or solve technical problems.

Leman serves as the director of University Entrepreneurial Initiatives and is the Curtis Hankamer Chair in Entrepreneurship. Through his Technology Entrepreneurship class, students become company consultants, integrating technological innovation with problem solving strategies to evaluate and tackle market challenges.

“The mission of this class is to equip a wide spectrum of Baylor graduates with confident skills in the entrepreneurial process,” Leman said. “It involves opportunity recognition and assessment; creating, adapting and deploying diverse resources; and developing leadership that drives value creation.”

Leman said his class, first offered in the spring of 2006, was designed to be the second course in a two-course sequence, with new classes designed as prerequisites. The faces of Leman’s class are engineering and business undergraduates, as well as MBA candidates.

“The mix of students is essential to the concept of the course,” he said. “Commercial success with new technologies almost by definition requires collaboration between technical people and business people. I am deliberately trying to give the students a ‘dose’ of how it will work once they graduate.”

Since the class was new, Leman had to remain aware that students who did not complete the prerequisites might need to be caught up to speed.

“The challenges of a cross-disciplinary group will lessen due to the preparation of more juniors taking the Innovation and Change Management class and engineering and computer science students taking the Global Business and Communication course,” he said.

A difficult concept of technological commercialization is persuading society to acknowledge it has an unmet need. Leman said in many cases, new technology being offered is difficult to market because the idea may only be conceptual.

“Think of iPods,” he said. “Until they existed, along with all the downloading sites, we didn’t know we ‘needed’ them. Yet, the market for them now is enormous.”

Teams of three or four students are assigned projects at the beginning of each semester. The teams meet with company representatives to assess technical opportunities and initialize the commercialization process. The projects are then presented to the client companies at the end of the semester.

“The class trains students in the whole process of commercialization for situations where there exists an ongoing interplay between defining the market and defining the technology,” Leman said.

Leman said he considers several factors when selecting companies for students to work with.

“Most importantly, the company must be doing some kind of commercialization with technology,” he said. “Secondly, the issue has to be a problem that is very important to the company without being the centerpiece of its core strategy. Thirdly, I am looking for situations where we can readily stay connected.”

Leman said the effectiveness of the projects depends on the state of development for both the company’s emerging technology and definable market. A company in need of defining both factors is the best bet.

“If the technical aspects are completely understood, and it is simply a market study for a particular segment, it may be very “high tech” but not what I’m looking for,” he said. “On the other side, if the market need is well-documented, and the sole need is an engineering solution, then there is much less demand for disciplinary interplay.”

Leman encourages maximum interaction with chosen companies to achieve a successful outcome.

“A team meeting at the beginning of the semester and a final report at the end is not enough,” he said. “This means we have to find Central Texas companies, or have good access to collaboration tools online to compensate for distance.”

Shama Blaney, a graduate student, worked on a project for iCyt Visionary Bioscience, Inc. last semester. The company specializes in innovative technology and science solutions. She and her teammates focused on potential markets for iCyt’s emerging technology.

“We looked at alternatives for using the technology in the forms of nanotechnology, pharmaceuticals and rapid prototyping,” she said.

Although the company was not local, students working on the project were given the opportunity to visit the company’s headquarters.

“We got to fly to Illinois to make a company visit,” Blaney said. “It was interesting to see the technology they had there, and see how our research would apply.”

Another team of students worked with PolySpec, a supplier of coatings and linings. PolySpec caters to an international market by providing products for construction and corrosion protection for commercial, industrial, institutional and marine purposes.

Leman said students analyzed opportunity and intellectual property strategies to define a new insulation product produced by PolySpec. He used university connections to establish a partnership with the company through Baylor alumnus, Buddy Ellisor.

“PolySpec owner, Buddy Ellisor, was introduced to me through Dr. Bill Petty and the development office,” he said. “As I learned more about their business and how much they are doing to bring new technologies to market, I realized they would make a great sponsor.”

The projects have proven to be beneficial to both students and participating companies.

“In general, the companies were very pleased with the results, and the students all told me not to take the company project aspect away from the course,” Leman said.

Leman’s vision for a hands-on, pragmatic class seems to be contagious.

“I have gained invaluable knowledge and experience,” said Leah Richter, a senior engineering student. “I now have a greatly increased respect for successful technology entrepreneurs. It has also changed my perspective of the design process as an engineer.”

Leman hopes to produce exceptional leaders through the combination of global and cultural competence; science and technology insight; and business savvy–all built on a Baylor foundation of Christian ethics and integrity. Students also learn to appreciate each others’ strengths while working toward their project goal.

“This course allows you to showcase your business expertise while experiencing the dynamics of cross-functional teamwork in a real-world setting,” said Katie Prichard, a senior entrepreneurship student.

The Technology Entrepreneurship class is still undergoing changes to address issues and establish a more effective class.

“The main obstacle we have seen is that expectations have to be very well managed through the whole process,” he said.

Leman said he is also planning to expand the program overseas next summer to respond to the demands for a balance of global, technical and business competencies.

“The reality of technology commercialization in today’s world is that it is a global process,” he said. “We now have agreements in place at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology to launch next summer. Shanghai is one of the world’s most vigorous technically entrepreneurial environments, and is one of the cultures our graduates will most likely interact with.”

As for future plans, Leman, who has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, is working with faculty in the Department of Chemistry to make it easier to add chemistry students to his mix of team members. The class structure and curriculum requires constant modifications to accommodate evolving technology and business strategies.

“This is simply a step of ongoing effort to make the course accessible and meaningful to technical students from all specific disciplines over time.”

 

 

Baylor Business Review, Fall 2006

1968

David Grigsby, BBA, has recently been named interim dean of Clemson University’s College of Business and Behavioral Science, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1982.

1975

Martin K. Scirratt, BBA, was recently promoted to vice president of sales for Administaff, Inc., the nation’s leading Professional Employer Organization. Scirratt joined Administaff in 1999 as a sales consultant in Dallas. He has since held several management positions within the organization. In 2003, he was promoted to managing director of sales performance improvement. Prior to joining Administaff, Scirratt served as vice president and production manager for Countrywide Credit Industries, and is experienced in Fortune 100 banking in the Texas market. Scirratt also earned a master’s degree in divinity/theology from Southwestern Theological Seminary.

1984

Craig Underwood , BBA, Certified Gemologist Appraiser and president of Fayetteville-based Underwood’s Fine Jewelers has been elected President of the American Gem Society’s International Board of Directors. Prior to taking the reigns as president, Underwood served as Chairman of the American Gem Society Diamond Standards Committee, Chairman of the International Task Force for Fancy Diamond Cut Grading, and Chairman of the American Gem Society Lab Gemological Committee. The Task Force for Fancy Cut Grading was formed to evaluate and develop a diamond cut grade system designed to analyze and evaluate the light performance of various diamond shapes – a first in the diamond industry. Underwood assumes the presidency nearly 20 years after his father, William Underwood, CGA, founder of Underwood Jewelers, completed his term. Craig is married to Laura (Orsak) Underwood, BA, and they reside in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

1991

Scott A. Nelson, BBA, an attorney with the Law Office of Scott A. Nelson, P.C., was named to Texas Monthly’s 2006 SuperLawyers Rising Stars list.

1992

Bill Arend, BBA, has started a new role managing the mid-market applications business for Oracle Corporation. As regional manager, Arend has a reseller channel and sales team focused on growing Oracle’s application business including JD Edwards, PeopleSoft and Oracle eBusiness Suite. Prior to joining Oracle, Arend managed the Houston area business partners for Microsoft Corporation. Outside of his role with Oracle, Arend serves as chairman for the Greater Houston Partnership’s Emerging Business Council (EBC). The council is part of the Houston region’s economic development, world trade and chamber of commerce. The mission of the EBC is to represent the needs of growth and technology-oriented businesses by fostering opportunities for business development and strategic alliances among and between emerging businesses and large corporations. Mark W. Smith, BBA and MBA, joined Calvetti, Ferguson & Wagner as a partner. CF&W is a Houston-based CPA firm that provides accounting, internal auditing and consulting services, including Sarbanes-Oxley implementation and ongoing compliance.

1997

Lori Coulter, BBA, is president and CEO of her own company, a made-to-order swimsuit business called Lori Coulter. She also has a patent pending on TrueMeasure, the software she uses to customize — and custom-size — her swimsuit designs. After getting her BBA at Baylor, she earned an MBA from Washington University in 1999. She married Kelly Coulter who works in finance for a division of Emerson. They have a young son.

2002

Michael Kabat, BBA and JD, joined the Austin office of McGinnis, Lochridge, & Kilgore, L.L.P. in 2005 as an associate in the firm’s litigation and financial services practice groups. He also recently married Alexis Lorick, who starts law school at St. Mary’s University this fall.