Techaisle Blog

In the ever-evolving technological landscape, businesses often stand at a crossroads, compelled to adapt to emerging trends and customer needs. HP, a renowned player in the personal computing arena, remains committed to adapting to changing trends and meeting customer needs. This year alone, the company has unveiled over 150 products. At the inaugural HP Imagine 2023 event, it showcased a range of products and solutions centered around three key trends shaping its offerings: workplace flexibility, the use of AI to enhance productivity and transform PCs into “personal companions,” and the importance of trust—aligning HP’s values with its customers, with a strong focus on sustainability.

HP has demonstrated its adaptability by launching two innovative products: the HP Spectre Foldable PC and the HP Envy Move. It has also introduced Managed Collaboration Services and HP Protect and Trace with Wolf Connect to address users’ productivity and endpoint security needs. Furthermore, it has expanded its collaboration offerings with the launch of the Poly Studio R30+ Bundle. The company also emphasizes enhancing partner growth and customer experiences, as evidenced by its partner ecosystem, including the HP Amplify program.

HP’s Innovative Solutions for Flexible Work Environments: The Spectre Foldable PC and Envy Move

HP’s innovation is significantly driven by what it calls the ‘era of flexibility.’ The swift shift towards hybrid and remote work arrangements in recent years has necessitated organizations to adapt to fluctuating work environments. Consequently, HP is dedicated to offering adaptable solutions, such as devices that effortlessly adjust to diverse work settings, ranging from kitchen counters to executive boardrooms. In alignment with this commitment, it has unveiled two state-of-the-art products – the HP Spectre Foldable PC and the HP Envy Move.

The HP Spectre Foldable PC touted as the world’s thinnest and smallest foldable PC, is a 17-inch, 3-in-1 device that serves as a laptop, tablet, and desktop, ensuring versatility and portability. Its foldable screen enables it to morph into a large tablet compatible with a stylus, a 12.3-inch laptop coupled with a detachable Bluetooth keyboard, and a desktop PC equipped with a built-in kickstand. This device offers flexibility without compromising performance, making it an optimal choice for mobile professionals needing a robust and adaptable computing solution.

The HP Envy Move is another innovative device, a 23.8-inch portable PC hailed as the world’s only movable all-in-one PC. This product caters to the needs of home-based workers, offering flexibility and mobility. It can be effortlessly relocated from one room to another without being bound to a power source. Its built-in handle, lightweight design, and self-deploying kickstand make it perfect for remote workers seeking a large screen without the bulkiness of a traditional laptop.

The Future of AI with HP: Personalized PCs and Collaborative Data Science Platforms

97% of SMBs and midmarket firms consider technology important and integral to business success. As we enter 2023, IT product and service suppliers are looking to create a context for understanding the range of outcomes that the new year may bring. Techaisle has launched its "2023 in Focus" research series to support that effort, which illuminates issues and requirements in the vast SMB, core-midmarket, and upper-midmarket segments. After surveying thousands of SMBs and midmarket firms and having hundreds of depth calls, we see key trends that revolve around:

• Enabling a connected business and business process automation
• Converging on long-term growth, profitability, and innovation
• Prioritizing cloud cost management and security
• Hybrid work but challenges are overwhelming
• Sharpening focus on IT spend for time to value, agility
• As-a-service technology acquisition gaining momentum

Current trends show that Robotic Process Automation (RPA) adoption rates have risen significantly, with many businesses wanting to automate processes to increase efficiency. RPA is a non-invasive technology for making daily operations more efficient, allowing for increased productivity. While larger organizations have started early, smaller businesses have also begun to adopt RPA increasingly. While there is still some misconception that RPA is not so relevant for SMBs. The rise in adoption can be attributed to the fact that RPA technology helps boost productivity, enhance customer and employee satisfaction, improve cash flow, support audit and compliance requirements, and gain a competitive advantage. SMBs rely on efficient workflows and effective systems throughout all processes, and in the SMB space, efficiency is often a critical competitive advantage.

Importance of RPA to SMBs and midmarket firms

SMBs have constraints, such as limited resources and budgets, that demand flexibility. However, because SMBs are agile, they can quickly adopt new technologies with less friction. Large enterprises are generally burdened with complexity and red tape, but SMBs can embrace change and gain immensely by implementing RPA.

1. Technological competitive advantage: SMBs can improve productivity to gain a competitive advantage by automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks traditionally associated with back-end office functions.
2. Real-time tracking: RPA systems can track, analyze, and estimate an organization’s data in real time. Based on the estimates, SMBs can focus on improving their shortcomings and building their strengths. In addition, the data can be accessed anytime when required.
3. Cost reduction: SMBs often have limited resources and are highly cautious about direct and indirect costs. Hiring more personnel increases business costs, but by adopting RPA, SMBs can handle daily operations with lesser dependency on the human workforce.

RPA Use Cases for SMBs

As RPA technology continues to evolve, its applicability across industries, functions, and systems also expands. Here are some of its SMB use cases.

Historically, remote work solutions have been the domain of large enterprises equipped with processes and technology resources needed to support workers in the field. However, driven by short- and longer-term factors, flexible work options are now available to employees in businesses of all sizes. Moreover, as social distance health requirements forced the temporary closure of public office spaces, remote work became a matter of survival for many organizations. The pandemic has also crystalized recognition of the productivity benefits of technology-enabled remote work – measured in output rather than hours – which is sure to have a profound and durable impact on workplace behaviors. Today, working from anywhere is the new normal, enabled by powerful communication and collaboration tools, which draw together workers regardless of physical location and are becoming the catalyst for change in large and smaller businesses. What are the primary enablers of this flexible work trend? Data shows a growing commitment to leveraging the power of the cloud and adjacent technologies of mobility, cloud calling, and collaboration - technologies that allow workers and teams to connect, reflect, and share insights and output. Techaisle SMB and Midmarket Hybrid work and collaboration adoption survey, N=1810, shows that:

• 93% of SMBs have prioritized remote and hybrid workplace technology solution adoption
• 58% of employees in the SMB segment are likely to work remotely
• 79% of SMBs are prioritizing cloud-based communication and collaboration solutions which show evolving recognition of the value of cloud calling and collaboration

The simultaneous commitment to cloud calling and collaboration solutions and future planning around a return to the office suggest that something deeper is at play in the SMB communications solution marketplace. Cloud calling and Collaboration are central components of virtually all SMB business activities. The need to communicate anywhere, anytime also means any type of communication and collaboration – synchronous/asynchronous, serendipitous/scheduled, on-the-go/fixed location, within a virtual workspace/within a specific app, with employees/partners/customers. As the lines of demarcation between tasks have been eroded by the increased pace and changing nature of business activities, SMBs have moved past linking discrete actions through linear, sequential processes. Instead, in today's business environment, SMBs interact at all points in the business cycle: in cross-functional planning and management, within a single co-created document, in the stages and connection points defined by their business processes, in delivering better customer experiences, and enabling improved employee productivity.

There is value in adopting unified cloud calling and collaboration. The use of traditional collaboration tools by SMBs is well-established. However, cloud calling solutions are rapidly gaining attention from SMBs. With nearly a hundred percent cloud priority, shifting from on-prem solutions (acquired through CAPEX budget) to cloud-based as-a-service offerings creates a sort of inflection point. As the name implies, cloud calling is cloud-based and available as a subscription. It supports remote work and mobility, provides cash flow predictability, easily integrates within the employees' workspace, and improves IT manageability and efficiency.

A significant collaboration technology shift is SMB's use of a cloud-based communications platform with integrated telephony (audio/video/web conferencing), IM/chat/presence, unified messaging, and mobility. Techaisle data shows that today, just under a third (27%) of SMBs are using integrated solutions, while over a third (35%) plan to adopt the platform in the coming year, a likely adoption growth of over 100%.

The Webex integrated collaboration platform