HP Amplify Impact is a partner assessment and training program that leverages HP’s Sustainable Impact strategy, and has a goal of enrolling 50% or more of their global partner community by 2025.
Frances Edmonds, Head of Sustainable Impact at HP Canada
In September 2020, HP Inc. announced its new HP Amplify Impact program as part of its virtualized Reinvent Partner Event. The program is a partner assessment and training program designed to help partners drive positive change by leveraging HP’s Sustainable Impact strategy. HP initially set a goal that 50% or more of their global partner community will join HP Amplify Impact by 2025.
The program is now available in 42 countries worldwide, with 24 new ones just added across Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific and Japan. Canada was there from the start, as part of the initial pilot project. And HP says it is pleased with the progress in Canada to date.
“We have been fairly successful in Canada, although we don’t share the numbers at this point in time,” said John Cammalleri, VP of Commercial Channels at HP Inc. “We can provide some global numbers to some extent, but we don’t break it down by country at this point.”
HP is however stating that their sustainable impact policies helped the company win more than $1 billion in new sales in 2020. Frances Edmonds, Head of Sustainable Impact at HP Canada, indicated where that number came from and how it can be directly traced to these policies.
“The $1 billion is a global HP number tracing from leadership from sustainable impact.” Edmonds said. “The number had been $1 billion for two years and was more than 3.5 billion last year. We have proven that sustainability is good business. It’s a team sport. All stakeholders are calling on us to do more. It’s no longer okay to be working just in our own four square walls. Companies are expected to reach outside, into all parts of the value chain. We think that the message from this for partners is that if they don’t get on board, they will be left behind, particularly as we track the volume of questions where customers ask about sustainability and sustainable impact.”
“It’s front and centre in most conversations with customers,” Cammalleri said.
Sustainable impact is a strategy widely practiced, under different names, by HP’s competitors, around more efficient practices involving packaging and recycling.
John Cammalleri, VP of Commercial Channels at HP Inc
“Every organization has some form of strategy around what’s important for this world and our community and our people, Cammalleri said. “There are efforts by other companies to do so. We see a differentiator at a partner level where we have had a very diverse partner ecosystem which has been a strength to our business. Leveraging our channel partners to create sustainability is critical. We think that separates HP from everyone else.”
Cammalleri said that COVID had no real impact on the rollout of the program in Canada.
“From the partner community lens, it hasn’t been a factor,” he noted. “We have had high adoption within the partner community. They view it as something they have always wanted to do. We also had a year of COVID behind us when the program began. So the impact was minimal.”
Cammalleri indicated that the program does require partners to make a commitment which will require some degree of time.
“It’s no different from a lot of things,” he said. “There are 24 hours in a day. They have their business to run. They need to make decisions. It takes an effort. There are varying degrees of the program that require more commitment and others that have less of a requirement. The program is made in bite-sized portions for that reason. It’s like any other decision an entrepreneur needs to make. Some will have similar priorities. Some will think about it for a while. Some won’t do it. But we are happy with how it is going.”
The program has two tiers – Catalyst and Changemaker – the latter of which is the higher of the two.
“In Canada, because we were a part of the pilot, we had both tiers right away,” Edmonds said, “Both require a pledge from the head – a commitment from the top. They then take a self assessment, which helps them assess where they are, which is something that the partners in the bottom three-quarters have not been doing. This tells them where they are in comparison to their peers. Both tiers average out equally in terms of interest in people planning and community.
“With Catalyst, they are required to record deals where sustainability is engaged,” Edmonds continued. “That’s the ‘lite’ version. In the more advanced version, they are required to create a sustainability plan.”
Often these types of initiatives are motivated by the partner desire to get a badge or some other type of designation that they can use in their marketing to end users.
“Based on partner feedback, what’s important to them is not the emblem,” Cammalleri stressed. “It’s about participating in something that’s important to all of us. Getting that badge is not what drives the partners. It’s a real commitment, to wanting to change things.”
Cammalleri also said partner support for the program is fairly uniform across Canada.
“I haven’t seen any type of regional differences in terms of adoption,” he said. “It’s been right across the country and in other provinces. You will have more in bigger provinces, obviously, and some larger partners have a strategy around this already. But even those partners look at our program and leverage and learn and adapt.”
“Sustainability is a new thing for most Canadians,” Edmonds said. “We can provide all the tools and resources, but they have to do something to make it meaningful. We are seeing partners step up to do voluntary programs and training. There’s a lot of passion. We are able to say we are Canada’s most sustainable technology. We have a lot of expertise here. We have a lot of work to do and hope our partners will come along with us.”
