Las Vegas — Going into his eighth year as Hewlett-Packard’s chief Canadian executive, Paul Tsaparis has more on his agenda than just increasing HP Canada’s market share and profits, which he has done very well.
Unlike many other subsidiary presidents, he is more than just a figurehead for a
multi-national company. This is why he’s chaired the Information Technology Association of Canada, and is a current board member of the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the International Institute of Telecommunications.
Tsaparis recently sat down with CDN to discuss Canada’s IT future and reflect on his former boss.
CDN: What do you think will be Carly Fiorina’s legacy at HP and in the computer industry?
Paul Tsaparis: Carly has left a strong legacy at HP and in the computer business. She has positioned HP from a strategy standpoint as an integrated solutions provider that is the number 1 IT company in the consumer, the SMB space and a strong competitor in both the public sector and the enterprise space.
She was able to dramatically increase the profile of the company. Evidence of that is the tremendous brand recognition in all these key market segments. And, she has positioned us from the standpoint of being able to fight the competitive battles that we need to fight. We are much more prepared to do this. At the end of the day, for me, is our ability to serve customer needs in an integrated solution rich way. We are better position today than we have ever been as a company. And, therefore we are in a better position to be more complete and comprehensive to our partners across Canada. So in some respects, the last five and a half years the company’s profile and the ability to serve those marketplaces is greater than it’s ever been. We have to give due credit to our leader who helped us do that.
CDN: From previous interviews you have always been a big Carly Fiorina backer. Are you at all disappointed, personally, that she is no longer HP CEO?
PT: From my standpoint there is always a time and place for leadership. The board has made a decision and there was a difference between the execution of the strategy that we had in place. I respect the board’s decision in terms of what we have done. Carly has been a tremendous supporter of our Canadian business and a great supporter from our business globally and we have benefited from her leadership.
CDN: We have talked numerous times about [HP’s] mixed direct and indirect signals. Are you still working on improving this message to the partners?
PT: We have tremendous relationships with our channel partners. We are the number 1 IT technology provider to the channel, not just in Canada, but worldwide. There is no company that puts more technology and services through the channel than HP. So in that context that relationship has been growing and our business has been growing successfully.
With respect to direct, this is not a complicated discussion. There are certain customers that want to have [direct] relationships with HP, and generally speaking if that is their preferred mode we want to respect that.
Interestingly enough, that is becoming more of an old discussion. Now customers are coming around to say what is the value that will be
provided to them, and we are finding that a lot of our reseller partners are providing lifecycle services, financing and asset management. It is no longer what is the price of the box. What is the value?
Frankly, our resellers do a tremendous job in providing that value. And, I think the direct and indirect discussions are almost becoming old world discussions as opposed of new world discussions.
CDN: How would you compare the business climate in Canada to the U.S. in the two plus years after the HP/Compaq integration?
PT: I think from a Canadian standpoint the environment is very different. I think in a Canadian context the relationships with end user customers are more stable and the relationships in the channel are more stable. Why people buy from HP has a lot to do with the value our partners delivered over time.
We have had tremendous stability in our leadership team and we have had tremendous leadership stability in the reseller partners here in Canada. I found those that buy value -based relationships are very positive. So the differences I see is Canada is more relationship based and stable rather than transactional. And, that is the major difference between the two market places.
CDN: What is the opportunity presenting itself to HP Canada now that IBM has spun off its PC business to Lenovo?
TS: There is a tremendous amount of uncertainty with customers and channel partners. Quite frankly, given that we have this tremendous asset with our channel partners, this is a wonderful opportunity to provide them with a safe, secure solution so that they can be confident we are going to take care of them for a long, long time given our commitment to the PC business.