Channel Partners are crucial & critical

Partners have always been an intrinsic part of HP’s go-to-market strategy and they need access to a broad spectrum of products and technologies to satisfy their customers’ growing requirements. In India, with over 75% of HP’s EG business being done through channel partners, strong alignment and ongoing dialogue with its channel partners is crucial and critical to its business. 

Pradeep Khemani, Country Head, Channels & SMB, HP Enterprise Group, HP India, affirms, “We strongly believe that customers look at doing business with partners who have the right skills and proficiencies, and those who can build and integrate the best-of-breed products & solutions, software and services for their IT infrastructure. HP is fully committed to helping partners grow their businesses – we do this through robust training and certification programmes, focussed specializations, enhanced opportunity collaboration, and exclusive support for our valued partners. HP’s award-winning PartnerONE programme, for example, integrates critical training, partner selling models, customer service support tools, sales, marketing, and financial rewards into a common platform.

HP and Its Channel Partners bonding

Growth and profitability are the two key common expectations that are on the top of the mind of any business. With our markets going through uncertain times over the past few years, coupled with the big shifts we are witnessing around Virtualization, Cloud, Social, Mobility, Big Data, etc, most of the partners are realizing the need to build focus rather than spreading themselves thin if they have to stay relevant with the customers and vendors who they have built relationships with over the years. The partners working on a strong business plan backed with the right vision for  the future are the ones we see surging ahead to mature into the next-generation solution providers. HP continues to engage and keep its partners abreast with how HP can help them through their journey. HP conducts several workshops, engages HP’s senior executives in several roundtable discussions, partner advisory forums, etc to ensure that the key partners across the country are exposed to and participate in discussions that aid mutual growth.

Channel Management

Pradeep points out that Channel Management is all about working on a strong framework with your channel partners that is consistent, predictable and time-tested, focussing around driving profitable growth – both for the vendor and the business partner. It starts with being very clear about how important channel relationships are to the vendor. Only when this engagement is transparent and built with the right rules of engagement, can it succeed over the long haul. 

Pillars of Channel relationship 

HP’s channel policy is built around three key pillars – Simplicity, Predictability and Profitability. Simplicity signifies ease of doing business with HP; Predictability is all about knowing what to expect from the relationship and being clear about the rules of engagement; and, finally, Profitability signifies the right margins/compensation commensurate with the effort and the value added by the partner.

Built on the foundation of these three key pillars, the strategies HP adopts to execute a relationship with the channel includes various elements like the PartnerONE programme, strong channel sales/presales enablement programmes like the Fridays with HP and the HP Partner Presales community (HPPC), the ExpertONE certification programme and the AchievePlus programme that rewards partner sales resources.  

Heeding opportunities through indirect channel 

While HP has its own account managers and specialists covering certain named accounts, it still expects the partners engaged in these accounts to unearth opportunities with these customers they manage. In addition, HP is largely dependent on them for opportunities in the Partner-led business. HP supports its partners with several tools and resources towards helping them do this better. For the past many years, HP has supported its partners with a Lead Registration System (LRS) which helps partners register an opportunity with HP. It supports the partners with lead generation efforts, marketing development funds which they could use for targeted activities with their customers/prospects, investment in proof of concept centres with its resellers and distributors, demo units which can help seed new products and technologies with the partners’ prospects/customers, showcasing some good reference wins, etc.

Pradeep says, “A lot of these activities go a long way in enabling HP’s partners in identifying more opportunities that can help us grow together.”