Hewlett-Packard Co has decided to subcontract its on-site multi-vendor desktop hardware maintenance out to resellers. Warranty and contractual services for personal computers and their peripherals will now be delivered to existing Hewlett support-services customers by prequalified resellers. The company claims that this new policy both reaffirms its devotion to resellers and means that customers will receive a faster response at lower cost. The company’s internal customer engineering team will be redeployed into high-end value-added service environments. Under the new model, Hewlett-Packard will continue to maintain the client interface. The company claims that end users should notice no procedural difference, as just one link of the Hewlett service value chain will be subcontracted.
