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Hp Cisco Essay

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What are the challenges facing Jim Heal and Mike Thomas? Jim Heal of Hewlett-Packard, Inc (HP) and Mike Thomas of Cisco Systems, Inc (Cisco) were both leaders of strategic alliance management teams that were formed in early 1997. Both teams were created to help facilitate the strategic alliance that was formed between HP and Cisco. As with all alliances, a wide variety of issues and challenges emerged that had be to be resolved and it was the purpose of the alliance teams to solve such issues. Beginning in February 2002, a formal contract to expand the HP and Cisco alliance was being negotiated and it was during this time that several important challenges emerged that would require the full attention of Mr. Heal and Mr. Thomas. One …show more content…

Therefore Mr. Heal and Mr. Thomas will need to develop a joint business plan whereby both firms can leverage the alliance without impeding on creativity, future development, or current product offerings. A third challenge facing Mr. Heal and Mr. Thomas is the issue of a sales force that is properly setup to accommodate the strategic alliance. On page six of the case, we learn that the HP-Microsoft and IBM-Cisco alliances both utilized dedicated sales staff. We also learn that in Europe, “HP used a specialized, dedicated sales force for selling HP services bundled with Cisco products.” (Page 6) In fact, Elias Stephan, who was then HP services group’s global alliance director, noted that “In Europe, the relationship with the field is much better.” (Page 6) If both HP and Cisco were used to utilizing dedicated sales staff with strategic alliances, what incentive was there for both firms to break the trend when dealing with an HP-Cisco alliance? Page eight of the case begins to outline some of the challenges that the HP-Cisco alliance had already faced concerning the sale of joint products. For example, we learn that at HP, Cisco products did not count towards a sales representative’s quota and this resulted in a decline in sales of Cisco equipment by HP sales representatives. Further, if HP or Cisco sales staff had to master not only their parent company product line,

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