CRN Exclusive: HP CEO Weisler On The Blockbuster A3 Printer Portfiolio Launch, Partner Compensation Changes And The Device-As-A-Service Megatrend

Weisler Speaks Ahead Of GPC

HP Inc. CEO Dion Weisler, who has been widely credited with driving an innovation renaissance at the company, is set to shake up the market once again when he takes the stage Monday at the company's Global Partner Conference.

Weisler, in fact, is scheduled to formally launch the company's disruptive attack on the copier market with a full portfolio of A3 printers – opening up a $55 billion market to HP and its partners.

The 16-product-strong A3 lineup, which includes both PageWide and LaserJet offerings, is set to to tear apart the copier market with 40 percent lower costs for color and a market-shattering lower cost of service.

Weisler spoke with CRN about the breakthrough A3 printers, the accelerated pace of innovation and changes aimed at driving partner profitability.

What impact will the launch of the new A3 [copier replacement] printer portfolio product launch have on the market?

We are having a very significant launch of our super-compelling A3 [copier replacement printer] portfolio. It is one of our growth pillars.

It is a $55 billion market and we have very low penetration in that market today. We are going to have a whole family of A3 – PageWide and laser technology – for our channel to tap into this $55 billion market opportunity.

We have the pricing, flexibility – everything we need to disrupt this market. That is the key point. We are disrupting. We are doing this with breakthrough technology – not traditional copier technology.

How big an impact you think the A3 product is going to have in the market?

What I am super excited about is we are not doing 'me too.' This is all about the new HP. We are driving our agenda. We are not playing anybody else's game. We are playing our game.

What we are doing with A3 is really disruptive. We are taking a print-based technology and applying it to a copier market.

The best way I can explain that to you is if you get a screwdriver and whole tool set out and try to dismantle any one of the copier products today, you would end up with hundreds of serviceable parts lying on the floor.

When you break down our products you are going to have a handful of parts, which translates to significantly lower costs, much lower cost to service, much lower cost to support.

What is key to success in this market for partners?

If you know anything about the copier business, it is that money is made and lost based on the cost of service. With A3 we are dramatically reducing the parts and service costs and that will translate into either increased margin for our partners or they can pass those savings on to the end customer in terms of cost per page.

The real tragedy of the copier space for the last couple of decades is it really hasn't encouraged color printing because the cost has been so prohibitive.

We are going to break that paradigm and we are going to enable color copying at significantly reduced prices with Pagewide technology and some of the other things we are doing in laser.

What is the pace of innovation at HP Inc.?

The innovation payload is awesome. We have epic products and services that we are delivering to the market.

There is a lot of change going on in the market and that change equals opportunity. When you have the innovation payload and you have the epic products and services, that is when you unlock the real value for us and partners.

What are the partner compensation changes?

We are going to simplify our approach to compensation. Our partners have consistently told us, 'Make it simple for us. We just want to be able to understand so we don't have to think about our compensation. We can just go off and sell and we know that when we sell we are going to be rewarded.'

We have gotten really solid feedback around the work we have been doing there with compensation. We want to continue to raise the bar.

I watched the Olympics and these guys [were] raising the bar and breaking records. That is what we have got to do every day – break records.

How fast is HP Inc. moving since the split on both the partner and product front?

Lightning fast. We are post-separation stronger than ever. We are focused. We are accelerating. We are delivering to partners and customers both core growth and future innovation.

What is the message you are delivering to partners at the Global Partner Conference?

This is our pinnacle event of the year for the channel. It is the one I look most forward to. We are going to be talking about our vision of creating technology that makes life better for everyone everywhere with really solid proof points.

We are going to be talking about our mission of driving engineering experiences that amaze with folks at HP who I am so proud to be working with. The depth and breadth of the diverse caliber of talent we have not only at HP, but with our channel partners, is unrivaled. We are innovating like never before.

What I will be doing with the channel is reiterating my commitment to the channel and our partners. We talked before about growing our channel from 80 [percent] to 87 percent. We are on track for that.

What are some of the HP Partner First updates that will be announced at the show?

We are going to be doing some Partner First updates aligned to the key market opportunities. We are going to simplify the offering and lay the groundwork for the future with growth categories within our portfolio.

We are going to have specialization for our partners in core areas that we think there is growth opportunities for them and us, particularly around mobility and everything-as-a-service.

What marketing assistance are you providing partners?

We are investing in digitizing our channel with sales and marketing offerings and demand generation capabilities. That is an area I have asked the team to focus on. It is certainly the way end customers are procuring. We have got to make it easier for the channel to utilize the tools that we create for them and just really help them on this journey of moving from transactional motions to contractual motions, which is the way customers are buying.

What will be the breakout sessions at the conference?

We have outstanding breakouts at the conference. The breakouts are very compelling. We asked our channel community what are the breakouts you want to see – what do you want to hear from us in terms of thought leadership, futures we see in terms of us helping your business?

We have tailored our breakout sessions based on what our partner council community told us they wanted to hear.

Sometimes at these events you get vendors asynchronously dumping what they think the channel wants to hear. We went the other way – we said, 'What do you want to hear? We'll build it for you.'

What are some of the themes in the Global Partner Conference breakout sessions?

We have outstanding breakouts on a wide range of disruptions, innovations, selling opportunities, business models. We are going to continue the work we are doing with women in the channel. There will be a session on that as well as a new session with a CMO panel. We think that is going to be particularly exciting.

We'll have tons of one-on-one meetings with partners with our top executives.

What is the change in the heartbeat of the company since you took the helm?

It is all about reinventing ourselves as a new company. We now have the speed, agility and flexibility to be able to focus on our business. We wake up every day thinking about printing and personal systems and we are not competing for resources in a very large corporation.

It has allowed both companies – HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise – to focus on what is right for our business. Now we get to do that. That is why you are seeing us move so quickly.

We haven't even been a company for a full year and we are coming out with a groundbreaking opening up of a $55 billion marketplace for us.

What is the device-as-a-service opportunity for partners?

We see device-as-a-service as a market trend that is a megatrend. We are investing in it, getting behind it, hiring the right people, the architects to support our channel partners.

It took us three and a half nanoseconds to figure out that is what we wanted to do and then we turned to execution. This business is about execution.

Partner compensation is another decision we made quickly. We don't have to think about the broad-range portfolio we used to offer. It is very simple now. So we can simplify the partner program.

Talk about the shift in how you changed the print supplies business model.

We moved from a sort of push-based model that served us very well for 30 years, but as the markets changed and customer buying behaviors changed in the omnichannel world, we went to a replenishment model – a pull-based model. It was a dramatic change in the industry that requires us to carry more inventory, for our partners to hold less inventory. They are now not tying up as much capital and we are able to service them faster. We took that decision swiftly. We announced it and we are executing on it.

What is the vision today and going into the future as you rally partners at the conference?

The industries in our core business are mature categories and they are consolidating. We have many of our competitors that are otherwise distracted.

We are just incredibly focused. We have everybody here walking with a bounce in their step. We are a very channel-friendly organization. I think our channel understands our strategy.

We have articulated the concept of what our business is today, and where partners can grow with us over the next two to three years. And we have painted a vision for the future with blended reality, immersive computing and 3-D printing that is going to take us and our channel partners and our customers ultimately on a journey for the next 10 years.

What do partners have to do to think out of the box and reinvent?

The reality is the customer base is changing. When you look at our 50,000 employees, we now have five generations of employees inside the company.

I can tell you the needs and wants of a 22-year-old straight out of a university are very different than the needs and wants of some of the folks that have been with us for many, many years.

The nature of the office and how people work is changing. Open plan is how millennials think. They are growing in the workforce and becoming the major decision-makers and will be the major decision-makers in the workforce over the next five years.

If you don't understand that millennial mind-set and the five generations of employees you and our customers are servicing, then you are kind of out of touch with the way the markets are moving.

I would encourage all of our channel partners to ensure that they are driving the right shape in their labor pyramids so they have diversity in their organizations in terms of background, age, gender, ethnicity -- having that diversity enables you to be in much closer sync with our ultimate end customers.