HP Launches Sweeping Expansion of Channel Print Efforts

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company said it will boost financial incentives to solution providers, target more traditional office copier dealers for partnership, and provide more tools and marketing support. It is also creating two, new segments for imaging and printing partners: Office Printing partners and Office Printing Solutions partners, that will obtain new levels of support in the space.

HP is aiming for the new effort to increase the engagement between its solution providers and as many as 15,000 end user customers in the enterprise over time.

The announcement marks one of HP's more aggressive moves in its printing channel in the last couple of years. Bruce Dahlgren, HP's senior vice president in its Imaging and Printing Group, said the move is being driven by significant advances in technology, a swift move to managed print services throughout the industry and new capabilities in workflow management in the enterprise.

"We want to help enterprise customers manage and deal with these trends and then, ultimatley, apply this capability with our channel partners," Dahlgren said in an interview. "We know, flat out, we can't cover this market ourselves and we won't be successful without our channel. We need to sit down and work with these enterprise partners, work with them around how you build a plan around this."

HP's Imaging and Printing unit is a behemoth, with $28 billion annually in sales including hardware, software and consumables in that segment. The company has long been the worldwide market share leader in printers. Over the past 18 months, however, rivals including Xerox, Stamford, Conn., and Oki Data, Mount Laurel, N.J., have launched their own aggressive moves into the North American solution provider channel with new products, technology and managed print service offerings - - along with increasing financial incentives for channel partners to sell their products ahead of rivals.

Xerox and Oki Data, in particular, have been aggressive about engaging channel partners in managed services deals. HP's announcement Wednesday is a clear indication the company is jumping further into that fight.

The company has been delivering services, including workflow consulting, with solution providers for at least two years in an organized fashion. HP has also been ramping up integration of its advanced print head technology throughout its lineup of printers and Multi-function Products (MFPs).

"Have we been doing this in past years? We have," Dahlgren said. "But I can tell you it's intensified over the past 18 months or so with all of our focus here."

Specifically, over the past year HP has engaged 2,300 named customer accounts with account representatives - - a team whose mission is to work with those customers, understand their businesses and workflow better and build a demand for HP products and services. Dahlgren said HP has assigned enough of those representatives to, in general, create a ratio of seven customers for each HP representative - - with the goal to still fulfill much of the resulting sales through the channel.

"That is not a direct fulfillment model," Dahlgren said. "We want to create demand by getting to know the customer. We still envision that the fulfillment is best and most likely will go through the channel." The heart of HP's move, Dahlgren said, is to build skills, tools and competency among HP channel partners to take that same relationship model and expand it between its channel and the next wave of 15,000 accounts.

Jim Fall, vice president of strategic planning for Cannon IV, an Indianapolis, Ind.-based solution provider that partners with vendors including HP, Lexmark and Oki Data, said HP's move dovetails with his company's roadmap. Fall had been briefed on HP's intentions in advance of the announcement.

"It fits in exactly with Cannon IV's go-to-market strategy," Fall said. "It's taking a solution approach to the enterprise, in helping them analyze and optimize their imaging and printing within their organization." He said HP's decision to provide more channel support "creates an opportunity for us to more effectively leverage resources and technologies we have not been leveraging in the past."