HP South Africa is reinvigorating its channel programmes in a bid to make it easier to do business with its partners.
In an interview with ITWeb last week, Adele Oosthuizen, printers and personal systems channel and retail sales manager at HP SA, noted that the company's channel partners have played a huge role in building HP to where it is today.
"In many circumstances, our partners are often quite literally the face of HP. They have a huge responsibility to carry every day, and together with the value our distributors bring to our ecosystem, the channel is absolutely crucial to our success."
The company has made some enhancements to the PartnerOne programme's compensation system to make it easier for partners to do business, Oosthuizen said.
According to HP, the changes to the programme include implementing a simplified, consistent compensation model to improve partner revenue predictability and provide clearer visibility into rebates.
From these enhancements, she added, partners earn rebates from their first sale. HP has also introduced a simpler rebate structure, which will result in fewer rates, thresholds, slopes and product exclusions for its partners.
The company is also offering additional rewards to partners that offer specialised products, and Oosthuizen said HP sets goals to enable acceleration and growth.
"Acknowledging the feedback from our partners to simplify the programme, the refreshed PartnerOne programme offers key changes, which will bring our partners greater consistency, predictability and profitability. We want to make it easier to do business with HP," she explained.
HP has also made some changes to its ExpertOne programme by simplifying certification processes as well as reducing the number of certifications and the focus on key learning activities.
"In order to earn more money, partners will be able to layer new certifications on top of existing ones in the designated focus areas like information optimisation, cloud, security and convergence," Oosthuizen added.
She also pointed out that there are several challenges HP is facing in managing its channel. "South Africa continues to suffer from the impact of the global financial situation as exchange rates are very volatile. Skills development and skills retention continues to be a major challenge in the IT sector.
"This year is about addressing many of our challenges and rebuilding HP around products and services, consistent customer-focused strategies, investment in R&D, and improving our processes so we can serve our channel better."
She also noted that 2014 will be characterised by recovery, a return to recognised industry thought leadership, and real growth and expansion.
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