For the representatives from Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (HPE), the interactions at HPE Discover 2015 in London present opportunities to better understand the needs of their customers and partner companies. These encounters give them new perspectives on consumer expectations and desires, as well as identifying rough spots in service interactions.

George Ferguson, product marketing manager at HPE, met with John Furrier and Dave Vellante of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, to discuss his role in organizing efficient practices for HPE and its subsidiaries.

Four points of productivity

Breaking down the complexities of modern workplace aspects, Ferguson presented four “umbrella” areas of coverage, each of which could be further split. First of these was the intelligent workplace, covering how users get support when they need help; then communications and collaboration, bringing the workers together and making information accessible; the wireless workplace, without breaks in connectivity to hinder mobility and flexibility; and lastly, the digital user experience, which continues to grow in importance practically every day.

Despite the persistence of technological changes, upgrades and streamlining facing business, Ferguson felt that these were only affecting the approach to core efforts. “Fundamentally, the business needs stay the same: ‘I need to improve my employee engagement, I need to improve my employee productivity and I need to better instill loyalty among my customers.’”

Virtual and physical seamlessness

Ferguson acknowledged that the forms of handling these efforts were changing, though, and that much of the visible genuine change was on the part of the customer. “Now, there are definitely some new ways of [improving business efforts],” he said. “As we talked about instilling customer loyalty, there’s some new ways of reaching out to customers that simply were not available before.”

As an example of these new opportunities, Ferguson pointed to the efforts of retailers looking to create seamless experiences uniting the virtual and physical worlds, as with walking into a brick-and-mortar store, having it recognize previous browsing, direct you to the physical location of an item on your wishlist, and give you the same discount you would have received online. While these levels of connectivity are still rare in actual implementation, all of the tools needed to put them into place are already available, just in need of refinement.

Summing it up succinctly, Ferguson offered this perspective: “What we’re trying to do is reduce that gap between the consumer experience and the enterprise experience, and we can do a great deal toward that.”

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of HPE Discover 2015 — London. And join in on the conversation by CrowdChatting live with theCUBE hosts during the event.

Photo by SiliconANGLE