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When John Hinshaw joined Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ -1.84% in late 2011 to oversee its technology and operations, he says he found a lumbering technology giant using antiquated technology that hurt its competitiveness.

H-P’s sales force was fed up with the Oracle Corp. ORCL +0.99% software it used to manage contacts with prospective corporate buyers. Consumers couldn’t find printers and PCs on its outdated website. Cumbersome approvals took days or longer for a field sales person to quote a price to a corporate customer, he recalls.

“I knew the good, the bad and the ugly,” said Mr. Hinshaw, the company’s executive vice president of technology and operations and Chief Executive Meg Whitman‘s first hire who had been a technology chief at big H-P customers. He joined the Palo Alto, Calif., computer and services company from Boeing Co. BA +0.04% and earlier worked at Verizon Wireless, both significant HP technology buyers.

The payoff so far is modest. In the first quarter, H-P’s PC revenue rose 4%, the first growth in seven quarters after quarterly declines of as much as 20% last year. Its big computer and services group expanded year-on-year revenue two quarters in a row—1% in the latest quarter, and 2% in the prior quarter—after two years of declines.

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