Hawley
Botchford is proud of how he can turn a $1 donation into $9 worth of food for the hungry
and homeless of Southwest Florida.
But Hawley knows he needs to stretch that dollar further. As executive director
of the Harry Chapin Food Bank, he has seen demand for the food bank's services grow 600
per cent over the past six years.
Enter HP's Software and Services Group (SSG)
with a proposal to provide the latest computer equipment and services to streamline the
food bank's distribution of grocery products to homeless shelters, soup kitchens and
emergency shelters. In exchange, the food bank staff offers a continuous stream of
recommendations on how HP products and services can be improved for small businesses and
offices.
"This is a rare opportunity for HP to monitor how our products are used day-in and day-out and what types of support a typical office finds valuable," says Bill Bechtold, HP channel development manager for SSG's Software Services Division.
Much
of the analysis focuses on HP SupportPack, a growing set of services to help consumers and
end users install and support their software and HP computer systems and peripherals. The
services are popular with small businesses because they can purchase an appropriate level
of support for a set price and then relax, knowing that help will be available from HP
should a problem arise.
"The way we'll be able to keep up with the demand is through technology, " Hawley says. "If I can simplify and automate many of our manual processes, I can maintain a low overhead; that savings is going to the bottom line to help more people."
The food bank is named after the popular U.S. singer/songwriter, who was
active in hunger issues. It is outfitted with a variety of HP PCs and peripherals that are
connected by a Microsoft Windows NT network. A bar-code system will be installed soon to
track the inventory of 1.3 million pounds of food that the food bank will distribute this
year.
The food bank's growing computer experience soon may be tapped as a test site directed by Second Harvest, a U.S. organization of food banks. Second Harvest plans to network its 200-member food banks in 1998. The network will improve coordination of large food donations that often must be distributed quickly to facilities across the United States.
Hawley also is making plans to invite small businesses in the area to see how the HP test center has helped the food bank run a tighter operation.
"We'll first intrigue our business friends with how HP technology can help them, like it has helped us. Then I'll ask them for a donation," Hawley says, grinning.
-Bill Hornung
(Bill Hornung is the public relations manager for HP’s Software and Services Group.)
