Kobi Elbaz, senior vice president and general manager of global channels for HP
HP has announced a series of changes to its overarching Amplify partner program, revamping how it incentivizes cross-selling, speeding MDF reimbursement for eligible partners, and bringing distributors into the program for the first time.
The most significant change for most solution providers is introducing what HP calls More For More, a cross-selling incentive program that the company says will make it more lucrative for partners to sell more of its products. At launch, More For More will focus on HP personal systems and products and services surrounding those systems.
“If you add peripherals, Poly headsets, and HP workforce solutions, you make additional compensation and benefits,” said Mary Beth Walker, vice president and global head of channel strategy and enablement.
Unlike past cross-selling incentives, Walker said More for More will provide a revenue boost across a sale’s whole personal systems portion.
“Our approach now is that if you sell the portfolio, it’s not just the incentivized piece. You get a multiplier on the whole purchase,” she said. “If you sell the portfolio, you get benefits across the whole portfolio.”
HP said More For More will be open to Personal Systems Power partners and Power Services partners who’ve reached the Personal Systems Power threshold. The program will offer tiered benefits based on targeted attach.
“When partners reach a target, they will earn a booster on their entire [Personal Systems] business,” HP said. “If they meet another target, they will earn another booster payout.”
While More For More initially targets Personal Systems, Walker said that HP will expand the program to include more of its portfolio over time.
“If partners deliver their customers the better experience and sell more of the portfolio, they get more compensation,” said Kobi Elbaz, senior vice president and general manager of HP’s global channel organization.
Also, on the co-selling and incentives front, HP announces it will debut a series of what it calls Growth Plays around crucial growth opportunities, including managed print, lifecycle services, HP software and SMB collaboration solutions. Growth Plays are slated to debut by May 2024 and will be expanded to other technologies in the future.
To make MDF easier for many partners to administer, HP announced “Fast Lane,” which will automate reimbursing partners for their authorized MDF spend. Walker likened it to programs like TSA PreCheck and Nexus that offer simplified airport screening to eligible passengers pre-screened by the relevant authorities. In this case, qualified partners will not have to provide proof of execution or proof of cost for all MDF-related activities; a change Walker said “should reduce times by 50 percent” for MDF compensation. Of course, those activities can and will be audited to ensure everything is done to spec.
Mary Beth Walker, vice president and global head of channel strategy and enablement at HP
The company has promised to bring distributors into Amplify since the program’s launch three years ago, and it made good on that promise by opening the doors to distributors. Walker said the move is coming when distributors reinvent themselves and the value they provide in the channel and will seek to reward and incentivize those changes.
“Distributors are having to stay involved in the whole customer lifecycle, which means new services and solutions, and hybrid work will continue to require new solutions,” Walker said.
The program has been optimized for distributors, Walker said, and built with flexibility in mind.
“We want to make it seamless for [distributors] to deliver the fundamentals and reward distributors for their investment in advanced capabilities with opportunities to make more and do more business,” she said.
Since its debut, the Amplify program has been focused on data-sharing between HP and partners, and it appears that while this will be the case with distributors, Walker said the changes in that regard will be minimal. As their closest outbound supply chain partners, HP has “lots of data” between its existing channels with resellers and distributors and its own data.
Instead, the data expansion with distributors will focus on “the ability for distributors to be more targeted with their customers,” Walker said.
“We’ll offer them opportunities in growth areas and the ability to drive better solutions together,” Walker said.
Finally, HP announced an expansion of its Amplify Impact sustainability program, opening it up to the company’s distributors and adding five new European countries (Austria, Belgium, Netherlands, Finland and Luxemburg).
