HP, Paul Robson: Two in a row

This time last year HP was the toast of the hardware vendor town. In 2007, it had become the world’s leading PC vendor and was rewarded for its channel consistency with the ARN Hardware Vendor of the Year award.

At the time, director of HP’s Solution Partner Organisation, Paul Robson, put its success down to his focus on three areas: Programs, engagement models and new product releases that drove growth for resellers. He also flagged consistency in engaging the channel and the creation of co-dependent relationships with sales partners.

And, again in 2008, the glasses have been raised to toast HP’s success with the company taking out Hardware Vendor and Channel Choice Vendor at the ARN IT Industry Awards.

“It’s very humbling, certainly,” Robson said. “As an organisation, our DNA is the channel. We align a lot of our resources behind it – all of our marketing programs, all of our go-to market, all of our product pre-sales, post-sales, training, certification, channel programs and programmatic activity. Inside the company we think channel first and it is really humbling to get the recognition from the channel, specifically the Channel Choice award because that is open to vote in the wider industry; that was really gratifying for us and my team as well for their dedication and hard work over the last 12 months.”

If football coaches, especially the successful premiership ones, can be accused of incessantly carrying on about the need for consistency, then HP has a lot in common. Robson acknowledged the vendor continued with the same three “pillars” identified as keys to last year’s success in its operations this year.

“The partner community needs to know where HP is going out and playing and how we are engaging with them,” he said. “Two years ago, we kind of connected into those three pillars and we went to market with a new business partner program this year, which is the next generation of the HP Premium Business Partner Program. I think it is working because the feedback I get from partners is that HP is now easier to engage with, we are clearer around our rules of engagement, our programs and our activities are more focused on growth and profitability, and we are more inclusive. We have tried very much to get feedback from as many partners as possible.”

To ensure it’s communicating with the channel on a two-way street and achieving consistently high levels of performance, HP run several surveys throughout the year, conducts focus groups and welcomes comments.

“We do what we call our Total Partner Experience survey, which is a formalised third-party run survey on our performance as a channel vendor every single year,” Robson said. “The things that come out of that I then workshop with our channel at the HP partner conferences. We are very inclusive regarding the areas of focus, the areas of improvement and then delivering on that.”

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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.”