Maybe not directly, but in the wake of last weekend's NetAid concert, which aimed to fight world hunger, Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HWP) is trying to make its e-services concept work to help feed the millions of Americans who go hungry every day.
HP will team with America's Second Harvest, the largest operator of food banks, to put together a Web site called ResourceLink to make it easier for companies to deliver surplus food or donate, then do dynamic supply, demand and transport linking.
"There's a misconception in America about hunger," said Deborah Leff, president and CEO of America's Second Harvest, which runs 189 food banks, with operations in every state and Puerto Rico. "We think about a stock market over 10,000 and unprecedented prosperity and that there can't be hunger. But we don't have enough food currently available in our food banks to fulfill that need.
"Even though we're distributing one billion pounds of food and reaching 26 million Americans, we still are turning people away," she said.
35M hungry Americans
The issue is huge. Some 35 million Americans go hungry each day. At the same time, 91 billion pounds of food wind up in landfills every year. ResourceLink aims to change that.
ResourceLink is meant to complement -- and perhaps ultimately replace -- a paper, phone and fax system currently used to get extra food distributed. Also participating are the National Transportation Exchange, which is an online transportation trading exchange based in Downer's Grove, Ill.; and Cyber Surplus, which has a matching-and-alert technology for food manufacturers.
HP has a history of philanthropy, but the company acknowledges that the move makes good business sense, too.
"This is a very clear, simple, easy way to demonstrate the power of our e-services vision and the underlying technology that makes it happen," said Madge Whistler, general manager for e-services at HP.
Year-long project
Whistler said that HP personnel had been working on the site, which went live Thursday, for nearly a year, and that the company had invested perhaps a couple of million dollars in building the portal, a figure she termed surprisingly small.
"A lot of the pieces were already here. This is about forming the connections," she said. "The pieces have been here and the humanitarian efforts have been here and this should make it much easier."
HP will continue to manage the portal on an ongoing basis. Within 60 days, it should deploy its e-speak dynamic brokering technology to improve the efficiency of getting items delivered.
If it works, it could transform the way national nonprofits distribute goods.
Said Leff: "Nonprofits frequently do not realize what benefits technology can bring in terms of meeting their vision."
Million pounds promised
She said that ResourceLink already had a million pounds of food promised, but she wouldn't predict how much more food the organization would be able to distribute using the new system.
"The fact that we have a million pounds already gives us a sense of its promise," she said "But we think it's going to dramatically improve the amount of food available. This is going to transform the way hungry people get food."
