HP South Africa has honoured its smaller, entrepreneurial partners by holding its first ever Proximity Partner Accelerate Awards in Johannesburg last week.
Valucorp scooped the biggest award, the HP Proximity Business Partner of the Year. The company was also named the PC Business Partner of the Year.
Tarsus and Drive Control Corporation snapped up the Distributor of the Year and Proximity Coverage Distributor of the Year respectively.
Gratz Global took home the Print Business Partner of the Year award; XOffice Stationer won the Supplies Business Partner of the year, while Big Time Strategic was named the Public Sector Business Partner of the year.
Thibault Dousson, HP South Africa MD, said the company had successfully followed through on an opportunity identified by team members nearly a year ago - to establish awards that recognise smaller channel partners. "We invested and put some effort into it and you guys came to the party to the point where we almost doubled the business we did with you to about half a billion rand this year."
Yugen Naidoo, channel manager for HP South Africa, said about 90% of the company's business goes through the channel model. "HP South Africa, HP worldwide are channel-centric organisations."
He told ITWeb Africa that HP is empowering smaller partners to do more business in both the private and the public sectors. "It is part of our BEE strategy, we are really empowering the smaller businesses in South Africa. If you look around today, it is not your big guys, it is the smaller guys, operating out of the boots of their cars. What we are doing is the sales and skills development in addition to empowerment in pricing so that they can be on par."
HP has 5 500 channel partners around South Africa and aims to reach the 6 000 mark by the end of March next year, added Naidoo.
HP South Africa also announced the launch of a new Proximity mobile application during the awards.
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