Tweaked HP PRI Program To Offer More Rewards, Less Punishment

Matt Smith, director of marketing for the Solution Partners Organization (SPO), Americas, at HP, said the vendor has spent the last several months tweaking the program that had many VARs upset last fall after receiving warnings that they were in danger of losing their authorized service provider status for not selling enough HP-branded services.

HP later said any deauthorization decisions were tabled until at least early this year.

While he would not provide details, the gist of the new program will be about rewarding partners for selling more HP services (and products) instead of punishing those that do not, Smith said.

"The intent is to make it more like a carrot and incentivize those with higher alignment than through elimination," Smith said. "There's no question there will be some requirements to get into the program but it will be much more set up as a beneficial curve. Here's a baseline so as you get more lines you'll reap more rewards as opposed to falling off and getting deauthorized."

While HP initially hoped to have the PRI program completed by the end of January, its ratification has been pushed back in order to make sure it's as equitable as possible for all involved, Smith said.

"We are absolutely spending a lot of time on this new solution. We're making sure it will be a hit for partners of all sizes. There were a lot of thresholds in there before with hardware revenue, service revenue. Whatever will eventually come out with it, there will be a lot of flexibility for partners across the board," Smith said.

HP's willingness to change the program was welcome news to VARs, some of whom felt real-world business opportunities often excluded the sale of HP-branded services, conditions which impacted VARs' PRI scores. "They took the mini-revolt of resellers to heart. I really think they are listening and making changes. And good changes," said Mary Stazi, president of The Computing Center, an Ithaca, N.Y.-based solution provider. "They're trying to level the playing field."

Stazi's PRI score has increased from 0.66 to 1.26 after getting help from HP to sell HP-branded services that complement, rather than compete with, her own, she said. "We live and breathe HP, have for years. We decided this was the tact we were going to take. We're on board more than we were. It was not that difficult," Stazi said.

But other VARs, like BPI Information Systems' Gary Ellis, said HP-branded services still don't make sense for them in a lot of cases. Ellis has received regular communiqu�s from Smith and said he is not as panicked as he was last fall because his PRI score was low.

"I would never say I'd never lose sleep about it until it's laided out, but I don't think they're going to tie us to hitting those PRI numbers based on our business model," said Ellis, president of BPI, a Brecksville, Ohio-based solution provider. "I'm putting a lot of trust in Matt. He's hearing our side pretty loud and clear. We're still selling our stuff, our services, and we'll sell the HP stuff when it makes sense to us and to our customers."