Executive Q&A: Sumeer Chandra, Vice President of Marketing and Strategy, HP Graphic Solutions

Q: Tell me a little about your company, the segment of the market it serves, and what you consider to be your “core” users.

A: HP is the world’s leading IT company with revenues over $124B (FY10). Within HP, the Graphics Solutions Business (GSB) focuses on providing a range of printing solutions to the graphic arts industry. Our business segments include HP Indigo and Inkjet Web Presses, Designjet and Scitex wide-format solutions, and Specialty Printing Systems. Through these segments, HP provides the graphic arts market with one of the broadest and deepest solutions portfolios, covering applications such as marketing collateral, direct mail, labels, packaging, signage, publishing, photo, and technical design.

Given its diverse portfolio, HP serves customers across many markets, including general commercial printers, industrial print service providers (PSPs), commercial signage printers, copy shops, repro houses, architects, designers, and creative photo professionals.

Q: How did you get involved with the company? What is your background before that?

A: I joined the HP corporate strategy function in 2006 and was responsible for supporting strategic initiatives for HP’s top executives, known as the Executive Council. After that I moved to the Imaging and Printing Group, where I led the marketing and strategy team. Earlier this year I became VP of marketing and strategy for the Graphics Solutions Business. Prior to joining HP, I was a management consultant working with Fortune 500 companies and providing strategy advice to senior executives and decision-makers.

What makes my background applicable to the graphic arts industry is the customer-service nature of my prior work. As a consultant, I worked closely with my clients, advising them on how to grow their business. Today, I find that while we are a technology solution provider to our PSP customers, we also play an extremely important role in helping our customers grow their businesses, which requires business knowledge and strategic skills.

Q: What do you consider your greatest achievement in this market to be?

A: I see HP’s greatest achievement as its ongoing commitment to innovation combined with its zeal and passion to solve customers’ business problems. When you put those two together, something amazing happens—namely, the creation of really breakthrough solutions for our PSP customers.

At HP, we have applied innovation to deliver value for our customers in three ways:

First, optimizing all the tasks a PSP must process to deliver a print job each time to save time, reduce complexity, or reduce cost.

Second, optimizing the industry value chains to increase efficiency and reduce waste. For example, printing on-demand and optimized workflow solutions from order taking to shipping and invoicing.

Third, creating new revenue models, such as Web-to-Print solutions, self-publishing, personalized products and custom wall art, that provide growth for our customers.

I see examples of this powerful combination throughout our business. HP’s high-speed Inkjet Web Press technology allows publishing companies to adapt to the highly dynamic book publishing environment and significantly reduce waste. HP’s innovation in inkjet technology has been applied to web presses delivering the quality and cost required by this industry. Meanwhile, HP’s Indigo presses allow PSPs to produce the highest quality prints with the flexibility of digital. You only print what you need with no waste in a broad range of direct mail, general commercial printing, and labels and packaging applications.

For the sign and display market, a more recent innovation is HP’s latex ink technology, which allows PSPs to move away from solvent-based technologies to gain more versatility and high quality while also reducing environmental impact. Finally, HP has launched an innovation that is about to transform the way architects work: Web-connected Designjet printers that allow them to manage printing and document sharing in a totally new way.