One area Robson claimed the company had improved since 2007 was around its sales engagement. HP has implemented a specialised sales model where a channel sales team is attached to the server and storage, PC, imaging and printing businesses.
“We are seeing some very strong and positive feedback regarding the level of specialist knowledge and specialisation in each of those three teams,” Robson said. “What it means is there is a deeper level of resources available for partners to engage with.”
In terms of channel programs, HP hopes to extend the current format while also introducing enhanced specialisations over the next 12 months.
“We are always tweaking and adjusting, always striving to improve and always taking feedback from our partners about how we can make our programs even better,” Robson said. “We will be putting in place some deeper specialisation models around some of the changes in product sets. We will reward partners that want to spec up and train and be certified in some of those products sets.”
These new 2009 product sets include technologies like blades, thin clients, retail point-of-sale systems, colour and mono laser printers and others which take advantage of the virtualisation movement.
And with so much success in 2007 and 2008, can HP now go three in a row?
“I would very much hope so, certainly from our perspective our DNA is channel; we are constantly striving to do better every single year,” Robson said.
“From our perspective it is a very humble and sincere thank you from a vendor that is very focused in growing our business with our channel partners. We are looking forward to a very strong 2009 in what looks like being some relatively unstable economic conditions. We hope to continue to work together and continue to get the feedback so we can make our offers more attractive.”
