Planning your Smart Office - let's chat

Through HP Smart Chat, you can now get “live” HP expert help from the comfort of your desk. Find out more.

For those of you who love to “chat”, HP Smart Chat is a new service not to be missed! A free service where you can chat informally with a “live” HP expert and ask all the questions you want on HP commercial products – HP Smart Chat lets you do so much more from the comfort of your desk. Introducing a new way to interact with HP for pre-sales enquiry, you’d enjoy the speed and cost savings of this new mode of communication. What’s more, now you can truly multi-task, while taking care of other aspects of your fast growing business.

There was a time when chatting was something you did over the fence or on the phone with a friend, but technology has taken chat to an entirely new level as a communication tool. Online chat is less formal, more relaxed than even e-mail, and it has retained the elements of comfort and ease even as it has moved from the physical world to the electronic world.

The HP Smart Office portfolio is designed to fit the way you do business, and that includes the way you like to communicate -- which is why chat is the newest way for business professionals to connect with live HP representatives to learn more about technology solutions and services. You can chat at your desk, when it's convenient for you, in a relaxed and friendly environment. Ask questions about HP products, explain your business problems and get expert advice on the right solutions, and learn about your options for acquiring the right technology for your business.

Beyond the convenience and comfort of an informal conversation you initiate from your desktop, chat offers other benefits thanks to its electronic medium.

• When you chat with an HP expert, you can keep a transcript of your discussion so you don't have to hastily scribble notes you might not be able to decipher days later.
• If you are working with a team on a solution, you can share the notes from your chat session transcript quickly and easily. If someone else takes up where you left off, they have a reference for the next stages of the conversation.
• When you are ready to work with a local reseller, you can share chat transcript (or transcripts) with them so they can quickly understand your needs and follow up on the solutions suggested by the HP expert. This speeds up the process of acquiring your new technology, keeps you from having to repeat yourself, and helps avoid any confusion as you explain your requirements to your local expert.

HP offers chat as a free service to all customers so you can plan your Smart Office solutions quickly, easily, and with advice from experts you can trust to understand your unique business needs.

To get a feel for the many ways chat can help your business, let's take a look at some different chat scenarios and the way they help business professionals find the solutions that are right for them.

• A business-first tape backup solution. McAdams Marketing Services is concerned that key client files and deliverables are not backed up regularly and that the business could be set back significantly if the file server crashes and data is lost. The Marketing Manager initiates a chat with an HP expert to better understand her storage and backup options. The chat representative asks the manager how much data her business generates, how often they plan to back up, how long they can wait to recover data after a loss, and how much data the business will need to support in the next 12 to 24 months. At the end of the chat session, the representative suggests a single tape backup drive now and explains some basic techniques for managing regular backups. The representative then connects the manager with a local expert who can install the solution and provide warranty and support services.
• Equipping a mobile sales force. Standard Office Supplies wants to provide its sales force of 30 with wireless access to the company's web-based ordering system. This will help speed order processing and give sales reps access to up-to-date information on new products and backordered products. The IT manager initiates a chat session with an HP representative to better understand the hardware and software required to support this business need. The representative asks questions about the kind of VPN access the company currently supports, options for accessing the ordering system inside and outside of the firewall, the different kinds of applications sales reps need to use on the road, and how often reps are in and out of the office. At the end of the session, the chat representative suggests HP notebook PCs that will serve as the main computers for reps both inside and outside of the office. The chat representative also suggests smart card security on those notebooks to prevent access to the company ordering system if a notebook is stolen. Finally, the representative connects the IT manager with a local reseller to investigate upgrading the company's VPN and firewall to support mobile users.

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