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Choosing Fearlessly

Anneliese Olson
July 2, 2008

Choosing Fearlessly? Is that something you do in your business every day? I have talked to a lot of customers who take risks in their businesses every day but do not want to touch their technology decisions with a ten-foot pole. When you’re in business, you usually want to be focused on running your business, not worried about the technology that runs it ...
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New HP eBook: "Nine Steps to Outstanding Market Success". HP Talks with Author Oliver Fritsch

Anneliese Olson
May 20, 2008

Have you wondered what eBooks are? Do you ever wonder what next step you should take to catapult your business to the next level? I had a conversation recently that should help answer both questions for you ...
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How a Chat with HP can save you time and headaches!

Anneliese Olson
May 14, 2008

Shopping for tech products can be a chore. Often that’s because it’s difficult to find a quick answer to a simple yet vital question.

Who hasn’t experienced the pain of shopping in a big box store and not being able to find someone – anyone -- with enough expertise to explain a product feature or comparison product? And while websites are packed with info to help you easily research a purchase decision, not every question gets asked and answered on the FAQs page ...
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Branding Bootcamp: Build your company's story

Anneliese Olson
May 6, 2008

Does your business have a brand? Can you rely on your brand to represent your company? More importantly, does your business have a story? Is it easy for people to understand your value proposition? If you answered no, or you are at least scratching your head, you need to take a look at HP’s Branding Bootcamp ...
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HP and Staples: Serving SMB Customers is our job

Anneliese Olson
April 8, 2008

Serving SMB customers is at the heart of what I do here at HP. I had a great conversation recently with someone else who cares a lot about those same customers. I’m excited to share with you the first channel partner interview we’ve done via podcast for this community.
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Free eBook for Small Businesses: Nine Steps to Outstanding Market Success

Anneliese Olson
March 19, 2008

Nine Steps to Outstanding Market Success is a new eBook that HP is offering to small businesses to help improve your marketing activities and increase your sales. You can check out the eBook website here. Every month we will publish a new chapter that you can download for free...
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Outshine your Competition with HP In-house Marketing Solutions

Anneliese Olson
March 4, 2008

Today, we are launching a number of new printers and printing solutions for you, our small business customer. It is exciting for me to finally be able to talk about them publicly! You can see the detailed press release here, but here are a few of my personal highlights ...
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Do you have a Chief Creativity Officer in your business?

Anneliese Olson
February 11, 2008

Creativity is a skill that all businesses need to have. However, creativity isn’t always something that comes naturally. As a small business owner, you probably have many hats to wear. You are the owner, manager, accountant, product developer, supply chain manager and marketing director all in one ...
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What do you have to say? HP wants to hear from you

Anneliese Olson
February 7, 2008

Prizes, prizes, prizes! We have them, but we need to hear from you. If you haven’t heard, HP is running a contest for small businesses. Here is the deal- in your own words, describe your business and your marketing/branding challenges and why you would benefit from refreshing or recreating your business’ brand image ...
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Manage your Printing with HP Smart Printing Services

Anneliese Olson
February 5, 2008

I have talked to a number of small business customers over the years and one statement I hear time and time again is that you are willing to consider anything that would save you time and money. You are in business because you have passion and expertise in a particular product, service or experience you can deliver; you are not in business to make technology decisions …
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Making New Year's Resolutions for Your Small Business

Anneliese Olson
January 31, 2008

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a fun and safe holiday. Here we are…starting off 2008. We’ve all made resolutions- some personal, some professional. Setting goals is a good thing; however, we need to be SMART when setting them (many of you have probably heard of SMART goals; SMART is a goal-setting acronym, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant and Time-based goals) ...
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Happy Holidays from HP

Annelise Olson
December 21, 2007

I wanted to reach out one more time before the holidays. I want to wish you and your business happy holidays and a happy new year. I hope 2008 brings you good customers, fun work and profits! Before we leave 2007, I wanted to share a little holiday cheer on behalf of HP ...
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HP Employees Get a Chance to Give Back

Anneliese Olson
December 21, 2007

Last month, about 120 HP employees (all focused on small and medium business customers like you) met in Colorado Springs to kick off our business goals for 2008. I have a few tidbits from the meetings that I’ll share in an upcoming post, but in the meantime, I wanted to share a thought or two about my favorite part of the meetings ...
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Buy from the Channel or Buy Direct? HP Lets the Customer Decide

Anneliese Olson
November 27, 2007

HP gives small business customers options of where and how to buy their products, solutions and services- and we've been doing it for a long time. We have a large network of channel partners who service you. We also have our own direct selling motions to buy direct from HP, whether it be from our website, our call center or our direct sales reps. We get questions from you, our customers and channel partners, about HP’s go-to-market strategy and whether we are trying to prioritize one selling motion over another. I figured it was time to tackle the conversation directly ...
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How to "Go Green" with your Business or Office

Anneliese Olson
November 12, 2007

I found another piece of content that I wanted to share with you. Here is a podcast interview with one of HP’s environmental stewards, Dave Lobato. He had a great conversation about what businesses are looking for when they go green and what tips he has for how offices can go green ...
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Marketing 2.0- Why HP is doing it and why you should too

Anneliese Olson
November 9, 2007

Wow! Web 2.0 has really changed how I think about things … seeing what opportunities are being created by it is exciting, whether they are new ways of conducting business or new ways to promote an idea or business. Everyone is learning this new world as they go; at HP, we are learning too ...
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A few things to check out on HP environmental sustainability

Anneliese Olson
October 31, 2007

This month has been a real learning experience for me with respect to “being green.” I’ve learned a lot about the environment, including what I should eat, how to conserve, and what green products I should buy ...
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Do you care about the environment? HP does.

Anneliese Olson
October 15, 2007

At HP, we spend a lot of time and human resources on improving the environment. HP is a large company that sells products and supports customers in many countries around the world. Beginning in the 1950s, Global Citizenship became a core company objective. In the 1980s, HP began electronics recycling. In the early 1990s, HP formalized its efforts to design with the environment in mind.
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What HP's Print 2.0 Strategy Means to Your Business

Anneliese Olson
October 3, 2007

You may have heard the news about HP’s big announcements at the end of last month. If not, you can find much of the information and presentations here. For those of you who know about Web 2.0, we are taking that a step further at HP and evolving to Print 2.0. Print 2.0 is about making it easier for you to print from the web and design for the web ...
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Discussion with Technology for Business Sake

Anneliese Olson
September 7, 2007

I had a chance last week to talk to Brent Leary from Technology for Business Sake about HP’s Print 2.0 strategy and recent announcements ...
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What Do SMBs Need to Know About Multi-function Printers?

Anneliese Olson
August 30, 2007


I had the chance to sit down last week and have a discussion with Bill Avey, Director for the US Multi-function Printing (MFP) Business. Bill is a funny guy who is full of energy, both personally and professionally. He shared some great examples and success stories about how people manage the world of “digital convergence”…
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Get Ready for a Sweet Ride

John Jantsch
August 27, 2007

I'd like to be one of the first to welcome you to HP's SMB Community. I'm pretty excited about the potential for this community to grow by employing the latest technology tools, sharing success stories and learning from experts and peers ...
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Printing's Impact on Productivity

Anneliese Olson
August 27, 2007

Here are a few additional excerpts from the interview I did with Scott Tuthill. I realize people don’t think about printing every day the way we do at HP. However, we want to make sure you understand the impact good printing decisions can have on your day-to-day business, your productivity, and your bottom line. I asked Scott about how a customer could start thinking about these things...
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A View of SMB from the Top

Anneliese Olson
August 16, 2007

Introducing our first interview in our Community Podcast series: A View of SMB from the Top! I hope you can take a few minutes to listen to my interview with Scott Tuthill, Vice President of our SMB business and our Americas LaserJet business. Scott is a guy with a lot of experience and insight in the printing and imaging industry so I wanted to share that with you. He also happens to be my boss, and his view from the top of how we think about our products, services and experiences from HP imaging and printing, to you our customer, is the key to a better relationship with you…
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Thoughts on Printer Emission Report

Anneliese Olson
August 14, 2007

Some of you may have seen the Queensland University of Technology research report regarding printer emissions. HP’s response can be found in the August 3rd entry of Vince Ferraro’s blog. Vince is the Vice President of our Worldwide Marketing group for HP LaserJets. There is also information available on our HP website…
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Touring the World Looking for LaserJets

Anneliese Olson
August 8, 2007

Well, I just got back from my worldwide tour looking for HP LaserJet printers…ok, no- that isn’t quite right. I was actually on vacation. Like you, I need a break from my day-to-day business. I traveled from the US to visit Denmark and Ireland. However, I couldn’t truly get away at times. I always ask businesses about their HP printers and I saw many HP LaserJets on my travels...
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Welcome to the SMB Community Podcast Series

Anneliese Olson
July 27, 2007

Finally...our first SMB podcast is here! Take a listen to the introductory podcast for our Small and Medium Business Community blog- a verbal invitation to join the dialogue. Hopefully, you can hear the passion in my voice- I want to hear from you…
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The "Big" Side of Small & Medium Business

Anneliese Olson
July 20, 2007

I’ve talked about common themes that small and medium businesses seem to face. Even HP started as a small business…Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started tinkering in a garage and faced challenges about how to take their products to market, how to engage customers in the right conversations, how to grow sales and how to plan for the future…
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Just Want My Printer to Work

Anneliese Olson
July 13, 2007

I have a number of friends who own their own businesses…even my husband is a business owner (he is a partner in a commercial real estate company). His company uses tons of paper in all shapes and sizes- lots of legal documents, faxes, presentations, and blueprints. Printing plays a huge role in what he does on a day-to-day basis but, ultimately, he doesn’t spend much time thinking about it. He just wants things to work…
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Always on Printing

Anneliese Olson
July 5, 2007

I mentioned that I had done market research at HP. Learning about our customers is critical to many of us inside HP in a number of ways. We need to know if we are making products that will meet your needs. We need to know if you value the features we design. We need to assure ourselves that products will work the way we’ve promised. We need to understand what you would spend for that product or service and how you would like to purchase it, get supported from HP, and what you think about your relationship with us…
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What Happened to the Paperless Office?

Anneliese Olson
June 28, 2007

I used to manage the market research group here at HP. We spent a lot of time and money designing research projects and buying 3rd party research to assess and determine market trends. Fifteen years ago, we did not have Microsoft Outlook or other tools to move documents around easily. We’d print out a survey, fax it to our vendor with our edits, and go back and forth like this throughout the edit process.
I’d have to take huge file folders with me around the world to look at documents in hardcopy format so I could do revision control. The process consisted of faxing a document or sending a disc to each other, both of which were very time consuming. I had always hoped that I would be able to carry around less paper…
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SMBs Unlocking the Power of Print with HP's Print 2.0

Anneliese Olson
June 19, 2007

Why do you print? In my experience, people ultimately use printers not because of the devices themselves, but because of the pages that come out of the printers. You create content, you print content, you distribute content, and you consume content all as part of your daily business operations…
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