Hewlett-Packard Norway: A Case Study of Office Relocation Project

This case study examines Hewlett-Packard's (HP) Norway office relocation project following its merger with Compaq. The project involved relocating an entire office while maintaining business continuity. Key challenges included cultural differences, budget constraints, IT infrastructure integration, and tight deadlines. HP collaborated with Accenture to develop solutions, including an integrated portal for employees and risk mitigation strategies. The successful relocation was attributed to effective teamwork, communication, and Accenture's expertise, resulting in significant cost savings and improved employee satisfaction. The document includes a strategy map and Zachman Framework to illustrate the project's planning and execution. Desklib provides this document as part of its collection of solved assignments and study resources for students.

Running head: OFFICE RELOCATION PROJECT
Office Relocation Project
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1OFFICE RELOCATION PROJECT
Table of Contents
Introduction....................................................................................................................2
Hewlett-Packard.............................................................................................................2
Strategy Map..................................................................................................................3
Zachman Graph:.............................................................................................................4
Major Issues Faced.....................................................................................................5
Conclusion......................................................................................................................7

2OFFICE RELOCATION PROJECT
Introduction
The Hewlett-Packard Company which is commonly known as the HP is one of the
biggest IT Company in the world. The organisation provides global services of many
different kinds of products, solutions, technologies and services to customers and businesses.
The organisation is having several offices all around the globe which takes care of the
business [3]. This paper provides information about one of the major office relocation project
that took place in Norway. In the year of the 2002 HP merged with one of the other well-
known IT Company, the Compaq Computer corporations. This merge up proved to be one of
the biggest merge up that took place in the decade. But due to this change, the HP Norway
had to relocate an entire office from one place to other [7]. During this process, the relocation
management team had to ensure all the works in the office and business does not stop.
This paper provides some of the major issues that the team faced during this project.
The paper also provides information on how these problems were solved. Further, the paper
provides with a detailed and complete Zachman Framework and Strategy Map. A summary
of the report is also presented at the end of the report.
Hewlett-Packard
As explained above the Hewlett-Packard is one of the leading IT organization
globally which provides some of the major services to the customers and other businesses in
the world. The merger which took place between the Accenture and HP proved to be one of
the major change in the industry. The merger reported a revenue of more than $72 billion,
which included more than 14000 employees and billions of customers. The organisation
faced some of the major challenges while this process [4]. According to many of the
researchers, the geographical factors affect a lot in the process of the management of the
employees and regular works. After the merger of HP and Compaq was completed, HP was

3OFFICE RELOCATION PROJECT
forced to start operations in favour of both the organisations. This not only increases the
complexity of the information technology systems but also hamper the business a lot extent.
The management team came up with some of the major processes that helped the
organisation for reducing this major issues [6]. The major problem that was faced by the
management to merge up the employees of the organisation. The employees were divided
into two groups, the Compaq team and the HP team. HP needed to find a solution soon for
the process restarting the works on behalf of both the organisation. In the offices of Norway,
both the organisations had their offices in Oslo which employed more than 500 employees.
Strategy Map
(Figure -1: Strategy Map)
(Source: Author)

4OFFICE RELOCATION PROJECT
After the merger up was completed, the management of the Norway HP office teamed
up the management of the Compaq in order to shift the office. The work had to be done
according to the management of the HP [8]. Here raised one of the major problems, the
decisions of both the management were not matched with each other and hence formed
tension between the staffs. One of the other major challenges that was needed to cope up with
the time was the fact that none of the work would be stopped during the migration process
and smooth workflow had to be properly insured.
Zachman Graph:
Why How What Who When
Contextual Due to the
merger of
the HP and
Compaq
Listing the
business
processes
List of the
Business
locations
Hewlett
Puckered
When HP
bought
Compaq
Conceptual Increasing
the Business
By the
merge up
Business
Logistics
Team HP During the
shifting
process
Logical Use of
proper
methods of
Shifting
Re-location
proper
resources at
a time
Employees
of the
organisation
Employees
of the
organisation
needed to be
shifted.
During the
Shifting
event
Physical In order to
enhance the
By moving
the entire
The system,
servers and
Employees
of the
During the
Shifting

5OFFICE RELOCATION PROJECT
Business office other
machines
organisation event
Detailed As HP and
Compaq
have merged
up hence the
move have
to be done
BY merging
up both the
groups
The entire
business
processes
Employs of
both the
organisations
At the time
of shifting.
In order to cope up with the situation, the management of HP took help from another
larger IT organisation Accenture [1]. The Accenture was chosen because of the fact the
organization had a history of helping other organisation for the process of rere-location
projects. Accenture knowledge about the IT industry proved someone of the best solutions for
HP Norway, which later became the most successful merger up in the decade [5]. The
Accenture worked closely with HP and Compaq in order to develop the solution for the
organisations.
Major Issues Faced
The major issues that came up while this process was going on are:
 The cultural differences between the employees of the organisation.
 Defining the major area where it was to be focused.
 The budget for the process.
 The major IT tools that required the merge up of both the organisation's architectures.
 Completing the work in given deadline.

6OFFICE RELOCATION PROJECT
 The work had to carry on, even on the day of the transfer.
 Lack of communication between the employees of the organisations.
 Lack of space in the new building.
 Loss of productivity.
 The management decision for the new team members.
 Work environment.
Apart, from this problem one of the major problems that was faced by the majority of
the employees of the Compaq was the fact that, they had to learn an entirely new technology
in the new office [9]. The technology that was been used by the employees of Compaq was
entirely replaced with the technology developed by HP and hence Compaq team employees
faced some of the major problems.
These were some of the major issues that had to be solved the management of the HP
and with the help of Accenture. The management team came up with some of the major
processes that helped the organisation for reducing this major issues. The major problem that
was faced by the management to merge up the employees of the organisation [10]. The
employees were divided into two groups, the Compaq team and the HP team. For both the
teams the working atmosphere changed which hampered the productivity. Hence the
organisation needed to give them enough time where they would communicate with each
other and create a bonding between them.
As during the rere-location time the work of the business was also to be done, the
management at first installed the IT settings that were going to be used by the HP in the new
systems and the employees were also trained to do use the same [7]. On the majority of the
time, half the teams would work with the regular business and other held would help in the
process of the migration. This ensured that work was carried on without any error. This also

7OFFICE RELOCATION PROJECT
ensured that the employee of the Compaq team had enough time to understand the new
technology that they would be using. This became the major area of focus that was to be
solved by the organisational management team.
The Accenture came up with some of the other major solutions that would help the
employees in the process. One of the solutions that were given was to create a newly
integrated portal which would help the employees understand everything about the new office
[9]. The solution was jointly developed by the HP and the Accenture in short duration of
time. It used easily to use navigation tools for the process that would answer all the questions
of the employees.
The efficiencies from both the teams of the HP and the Accenture proved to be one of
the best and this resulted in the $72000 saving in the project of re-re-location. This also
ensured none of the employees had any problem with the new environment and well
communicated between each other. This also helped the team in the proper developed of the
future plans that would be very much useful for the process of managing the teams in the
future.
The Accenture also helped the HP in identifying the other major area of the risks that
would come up after there- re-location was completed [6]. The Accenture helped the
organisation in understanding and developing plans for the future that would help the teams
for the process of enhancing the businesses in the future.
Conclusion:
Thus, concluding the topic it can be said that the merge up of the teams and the
management proved to be one of the most valuable resources to the organisation. The end the
Norway office relocation process became one of the most successful projects. The team HP

8OFFICE RELOCATION PROJECT
credited the Accenture for the entire help and commented that the project would have faced
huge difficulties without the help. The employees were also satisfied with the results of the
merge up and working process never disrupted during the shifting. During this time the entire
teams of the HP, Compaq and Accenture worked in overtime to be proved as the best teams.
It cannot be said that there were no minor difficulties faced during the process, but the
efficiency of the teams eradicated the problems and moved forward.

9OFFICE RELOCATION PROJECT
References
[1] Walker, I., Thomas, G.O. and Verplanken, B., 2015. Old habits die hard: Travel habit
formation and decay during an office relocation. Environment and Behavior, 47(10),
pp.1089-1106.
[2] Rolfö, Linda Victoria. "Relocation to an activity-based flexible office–Design processes
and outcomes." Applied ergonomics73 (2018): 141-150.
[3] Kipnis, Baruch A. "Location and Relocation of Class an Office Users: Case Study in the
Metropolitan CBD of Tel-Aviv." In Geography Research Forum, vol. 18, pp. 64-82. 2016.
[4] Hallman, David M., Svend Erik Mathiassen, and Helena Jahncke. "Sitting patterns after
relocation to activity-based offices: A controlled study of a natural intervention." Preventive
medicine 111 (2018): 384-390.
[5] Seddigh, Aram, Cecilia Stenfors, Erik Berntsson, Rasmus Bååth, Sverker Sikström, and
Hugo Westerlund. "The association between office design and performance on demanding
cognitive tasks." Journal of Environmental Psychology 42 (2015): 172-181.
[6] Tusler, Megan. "Toward a Native Archive: Chicago's Relocation Photos, Indian Labor,
and Indigenous Public Text." American Indian Quarterly 42, no. 3 (2018): 375-410.
[7] Allowances, Relocation. "WorkSource Information Notice (WIN)." (2017).
[8] Nekoranec, Wendell. "Ethical leadership and OD practice." Handbook for Strategic HR-
Section 3: Use of Self as an Instrument of Change (2015).
[9] Zell, Deone. Changing by design: Organizational innovation at Hewlett-Packard. Cornell
University Press, 2018.
[10] Krishna Prasad, K. "Accenture–Understanding Sustainable Business Strategies." (2018).

10OFFICE RELOCATION PROJECT
[11] Burgelman, Robert A., Webb McKinney, and Philip E. Meza. Becoming Hewlett
Packard: why strategic leadership matters. Oxford University Press, 2016.
[12] Bellows, Scott. "Management’s devotion to innovation, not mergers, key to success of
tech firms." (2017).