More changes for HP’s sales team

Hewlett-Packard (HP) is planning yet more changes to its channel-facing sales team in the New Year.

The vendor, which has spent the past year creating its Preferred Partner Programme (PPP) as part of its PartnerONE scheme, pledged to simplify things for partners earlier this year following the launch(CRN, 19 September).

However, this latest move means that instead of having just the one account manager to deal with, resellers will soon be required to deal with multiple account managers, each with their own specialisation in HP product sets such as Imaging and Printing (IPG), Personal Systems Group (PSG) and Enterprise Storage Services (ESS).

David Poskett, director of Solutions Partner Organisation (SPO) at HP, said it was too early to reveal the exact changes at this stage.

“The main change is that we are trying to align our business units. Whereas we have had a general partner business manager there will now be greater emphasis on specialist account management.”

Poskett stressed that there will still be one person overall acting as the lead account manager.

“We don’t plan to take anything away from partners,” he insisted.

But one reseller, who requested anonymity, said: “This is going to mean every reseller has to form a new relationship within HP, even if they have an existing one already. I believe this is how it manages its channel sales teams in Europe as well. It seems they are treating Europe as one entity rather than individual countries and taking a ‘one size fits all’ approach.”

Sue Richards, managing director of VAR EBM, added: “HP is trying to build brand awareness, but moving people around constantly makes things difficult. They have the commitment from partners, but have to get the back-end in place to help us”.

sara_yirrell@vnu.co.uk