Business Students Visit Hewlett Packard

The Managerial Accounting class of 2017 led by Professor Clark Thomas undertook a visit to the European headquarters of the Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). The students were hosted at HPE’s very new, state of the art, flagship building in Meyrin, Geneva. Director of Global Financial Services - Robert Pashley and Financial Analyst Burcu Haznedar hosted the students who were given access to the attractive and collaborative environment where the finance teams are working in support of the major restructuring underway. HPE is a Fortune 500 company with $50 billion in global revenues and 195,000 employees (2016).

Students experienced first hand HPE’s performance management structure comprising company strategy, responsibility accounting, budgeting and HPE’s comprehensive reward system. Robert Pashley concluded the visit with a Q&A session on a career in finance.

Thomas, a former long serving HP executive, thanked Robert and Burcu. He said, “Real time applied learning allows Webster students to align the theory with practice. The students had the opportunity to ask many questions and we were fortunate to see many of the key syllabus topics being executed by a world class company.”

100% student attendance provided some enthusiastic responses. Sabir and Milicia referred to the visit as a “great trip and hoped there might be others in the future.” They liked “seeing the theory of a Balanced Scorecard and company goals being applied”. Julia and Alec expressed real interest in how the methodology of ”creating value for stakeholders worked” and were “very impressed by HPE’s cash conversion cycle of 6 days”.

Overall the visit was described as a “ very positive experience”. Students asked for “a future visit detailing the typical working day of a managerial accountant.”