HP pumping £2.5m of 'strategic deal funding' into UK channel

Vendor looks to help partners win new business by upping usual investment levels by 25 to 30 per cent

HP will plough £2.5m of funding into its UK&I channel this quarter to help its partners win new business.

The sum is a 25 to 30 per cent increase on what the PC and printer vendor normally invests in a given quarterly period, according to HP's UK&I channel director, Neil Sawyer.

The hike in "strategic deal funding" over the next 12 weeks is one of several channel initiatives HP is announcing this week as it looks to up the ante against its competitors, Sawyer said.

"One of the objectives is winning new-logo business, and what we mean by that is customers that haven't typically purchased HP-branded technology before," Sawyer said of the strategic deal funding. "One of the ways to do that is to invest more money into our channel partners to go out and represent our brand, over and above others.

"Typically where we are strong is from the mid-market - 250 seats - up to any size of corporation, and that is where a lot of our focus will be over the coming weeks and months."

HP is also this week announcing the second year of its HP for Education programme.

In its first year, the scheme, which is open to HP's strategic education resellers, saw HP dish out about £1m in credits to schools and colleges that purchased its technology, Sawyer said.

Meanwhile, HP has also launched a device-as-a-service (DaaS) initiative with distributors Westcoast and Ingram. HP has scored some major DaaS wins in recent months, Sawyer said, and the programme is designed to replicate that success among its channel partners.

Finally, Sawyer said hundreds of partners have benefited from its Build your Business scheme over the last six to eight months, which sees HP bring partners up to speed on areas outside its traditional PC and printer portfolio.

"We have briefed well over 300 partners specifically around mobility and how to grow in that area, as well as secure printing, managed print services, immersive computing, 3D printing and scanning and the Google ecosystem," Sawyer said. "All these areas are particularly pertinent to partners that have traditionally sold a lot of core IT but are looking to understand how to diversify into new areas of technology."