The worst-case scenario was if the merged website could not take orders, or if HP could not service customers who wanted a service event or called its call centre. Well understanding these risks meant planning for the best time for integration. "We did not do it in the last month of the quarter, or the last quarter of the year, for instance, but looked at the opportune times to make these risky pieces less so. We knew where the pain thresholds were, and had a SWAT team go in to resolve any issues that came up," says Haas.

Contingency systems were also put in place when logistics hubs were consolidated and the call centre system was changed. "We had to make sure staff at call centres were trained." On the first day, says Haas, he put in the necessary buffers to handle five times more than the expected load capacity because he didn't want the site to go down due to not being able to cope with the higher traffic.

Haas is expressive when it comes to revealing metrics and cost savings. "On hp.com, we have increased customer satisfaction by 30 percent now that we have one experience. We conduct about 4,000 surveys in a month. We did a brand perception study before customers visited hp.com, and afterwards. In the consumer space, for instance, brand perception went up the roof because customers did not realise the breadth of the product and service portfolio that HP has." Now that the site is fully integrated, 99 percent of all pages are tagged, meaning that there are Java scripts in the pages that allow administrators to see where customers go and what they do. "If we identify behaviours that are not conductive to a good experience, such as a high exit rate for a page, we can tweak the page to optimise it for that experience. Because we have one system and process worldwide, we can quickly make an adjustment," says Haas. Together the consolidation delivered part of the US$ 3.5 billion in cost savings within the first year-and-a-half of HP and Compaq coming together as a company.