Neil Westhof (HP)
HP honoured its channel partners for their contribution to key areas of sustainability, such as climate change, human rights and digital equity, at its inaugural Amplify Impact awards.
Of 43 recipients, 11 Asian partners across Australia, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Singapore were recognised in six different categories.
“The efforts of our partners in Asia, and around the world, in creating meaningful impact in the tech space is extremely heartening to see,” said Neil Westhof, head of Sales for Greater Asia at HP.
“Especially since 100% of our pledged partners have completed the development of sustainable impact plans using the world’s first, automated, modular sustainability plan platform and exceeding initial targets.”
Queensland-based managed services company Truis was crowned overall global winner of the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) Strategy award, which celebrates the most impactful DE&I strategies.
This is in addition to the Climate Action award that acknowledges partners with the most comprehensive carbon footprint and action plan.
In a recent interview with Channel Asia, Norm Jefferies, managing director of Truis, shared the company’s commitment to creating a viable future for generations to come.
Despite the hardships of kickstarting a sustainability journey, Jefferies acknowledged HP as “an important part” of Truis' sustainability journey.
“I think one of the best things that happened under the HP Amplify Impact program was that they provided us with some assistance,” he said. “In our case, we got to speak with a local Australian member who worked with us to help us understand the HP tools we had at our fingertips, which involved education, and tools to help us set goals.”
For the Sustainability Business award, eight Asia-based companies were recognised at the country-level for the highest percentage of sustainability-influenced sales deals.
The winners include India-based Quantum Technologies, Korea’s Babas, 01 Computer Systems from Singapore, Kiwi IT services provider Imagetext, SLID Netsystem of the Philippines, Aussie firm Virtu, Malaysia’s ICT Zone, and Era Supplies from Indonesia.
Virtu and India’s BB Professionals also bagged the HP Life award – given to partners with the highest number of HP Life courses completed.
According to the vendor, HP Life is a global training program aimed at enabling people to build skills for the future by providing access to free, accessible IT and business skills training courses in eight languages.
Winners of the Amplify Impact Awards will be officially honoured at HP’s upcoming Amplify Partner Conference in Chicago from 28 to 30 March.
New enhancements
HP’s commitment to sustainability was encapsulated with the launch of Amplify Impact in early 2021 and was further expanded to an additional 24 countries in February 2022, including Indonesia and Malaysia, making the initiative available to a total of 43 nations worldwide.
At its partner roadshow in Dubai last August, the vendor declared that the program will reach all markets -- with plans to launch the program via a phased approach over the next two years.
The initiative focuses on providing Amplify partners with ways to benefit from improving sustainability practices, offering training, sales and marketing resources, as well as a return and recycling program for end-of-life HP products.
Based on feedback from its channel partners, HP is rolling out new benefits as part of its continued support for partners in their “Sustainable Impact” journey.
One of the program’s new features is the Global Good Community Project Platform which connects partners with a curated series of projects offering volunteer and donation opportunities through non-governmental organisations (NGOs) around the world.
HP is also adding new features to its “Find a Reseller” platform, putting a spotlight on HP Amplify Impact partners so that customers can engage “purpose-driven” resellers that are aligned to their values.
The hardware company also revealed that its partners have continued to show “tremendous interest” in the sustainability program with “over 250 percent increase” in Sustainable Impact training courses completed.
“HP Amplify Impact partners understand that leading with Sustainability is not only good for the planet - it’s good for business, winning deals, and driving profitable growth,” added Kobi Elbaz, general manager of HP’s Global Channel organisation.
“We are thrilled to celebrate the well-deserving partners who went above and beyond in driving significant impact in their respective categories and in the process, reducing their customers' footprint, while supporting HP's journey to become the world's most sustainable and just technology company.”
