HP has announced some major changes to the structure of its partner programme, with plans to make resellers better positioned to support customers that are going through digital transformation.
The firm has been working on the Amplify programme for a year, with partners across the globe being given the chance to share their wish list and feedback around where the vendor should focus its ideas.
Luciana Broggi, global head of route-to-market at HP, said customers were at the heart of Amplify, and it wanted to support partners in giving users the best experiences and outcomes.
“This is a programme we have been designing to make sure we have a future-ready HP channel ecosystem that supports the fast transformation that we see happening in the channel and the market every day,” she said.
“We want to make sure we really understand the customer journey together...and we want to be able to deliver the best value and the best business outcomes. To deliver to the customer the best experience, we need to have a channel that is motivated and happy about working with us, and sees the value of working with HP.”
To get those satisfaction levels up, the vendor is making Amplify consistent and rewarding for partners. The firm has moved from HP First, the managed print programme, retail and online, and Amplify combines all routes to market and business units into a single programme.
“Amplify is a programme we have been designing to make sure we have a future-ready HP channel ecosystem that supports the fast transformation that we see happening in the channel and the market every day”
Luciana Broggi, HP
There will be more rewards for those that deliver a more value-added proposition. The silver, gold and platinum approach is being dropped in favour of a dual-track system that differentiates resellers between “synergy” and “power”.
Synergy is the entry level, with minimum entry requirements and standard benefits. Power partners get additional rewards, data-driven insights and more support through the portal.
Based on three pillars – performance, capabilities and collaboration – there will still be target setting, along with the skills that partners hold or are prepared to earn, and finally collaboration, where knowledge is combined and shared around products and buying behaviours.
“If we put the two together and are able to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to get out the intelligence that will enable us to design better products and a better user experience, delivered end-to-end, then we are both more successful,” said Broggi.
“We have been collecting a lot of data from partners [under the existing programme], but we have been mainly using that from an eligibility standpoint, to calculate rewards to the partners and for compliance reasons. Now we want to use the data to drive new business, create value-add for partners and to be much more successful,” she added.
Broggi was also keen to stress that even though “synergy” and “power” were broad categories, there would still be opportunities for partners to earn rewards and stand out from their competitors. “We would like all our strategic partners to be power partners,” she said.
The firm will be holding discussions with its partners over the next few weeks, giving them the chance to identify which track they want to opt for and how that choice will reward them.
HP will launch the commercial side of Amplify on 1 November, and retail partners will be added to the programme at the start of May next year.
Christoph Schwell, chief commercial officer at HP, said that even before Covid-19 hit, the firm was creating a partner programme that would be much more digital.
He said changes in the market had been accelerated and 92% of buyers preferred to buy online, with the same percentage also doing their research on the web.
“Our programme is addressing the need for us to map the journey that our customers are going to have to take in the future,” he said.
Schwell also commented on the plans to work with more data gained from partners, assuring the channel that it would respect any information that the channel shared around trends.
“What is really at the heart of collaboration is data,” he added. “Data becomes an additional currency to define the relationship that HP has with its partners. In an indirect go-to-market model, the data the channel has is very important for HP to define how we engage with customers and how we think about products and services we want to bring to market.”
