HPE Financial Services Is For The ‘First Time’ Ever ‘Rewarding’ Customers For Sustainability: 5 Things You Need To Know

HPE Financial Services is for the first time providing more attractive financing rates for customers that demonstrate a commitment to sustainability.

‘Rewarding’ Customers For Sustainability Initiatives

HPE Financial Services’ Force For Good financing program is for the first time ever “rewarding” customers that demonstrate a commitment to sustainability, said HPE Financial Services Senior Vice President Worldwide Channel & SMB Paul Sheeran.

“This is absolutely unique,” said Sheeran. “It’s the first time we are actually rewarding and recognizing customers who have made a demonstrated commitment in their sustainability efforts…The savings are significant and noteworthy.”

The more attractive financing comes with interest rates rising around the world and the cost of capital becoming a bigger issue for customers and partners, said Sheeran.

“The cost of capital is rising, interest rates are rising all around the world, certainly in the US as well, there’s a lot of volatility out there with supply chain constraints,” said Sheeran. “This is definitely a new and significant offer from HPE Financial Services to help our enterprise and SMB customers continue with their IT investments, but also do it in a sustainable way.”

Eligibility for the new financing will be determined by Dun & Bradstreet’s ESG Intelligence’s ESG Rankings and other factors, said HPE.

HPE said the special financing rates it will provide customers varies around the world and also takes into account the products being purchased. HPE did not provide a range or estimate of the rates under the new program.

The ‘Force for Good’ financing favors more energy efficient storage, networking and compute offerings like HPE’s ProLiant Gen 11 servers which delivers 43 percent more energy savings with the AMD EPYC 9004 processor compared to Gen 10 servers. The Force For Good financing also includes HPE Aruba networking products and PCs from HP Inc.

“This is really helping customers invest in more efficient products with a more attractive financing rate,” said Sheeran. “It is available around the world and we expect it will generate a lot of interest with our customers and partners.”

The more attractive financing rates come with an increasing number of customers implementing sustainability requirements as part of their IT and cloud purchasing contracts.

“It’s not just a nice to have, it’s a way to do business now,” said Sheeran of the increased demand by customers for sustainability contract vehicles. “We firmly believe that as we go forward that sustainability is critical. HPE has and will maintain an excellent track record on this going forward.”

HPE FS CEO and President Gerri Gold said in a blog post that the “groundswell of sustainability focused initiatives in the last few years is inspiring.”

“In parts of the world, the adage is to ‘water where it grows,’” wrote Gold. “Through initiatives like our Force For Good Financing Program, the plan is to continue growing strong, competitive businesses that are prioritizing sustainability in their long term business strategies.”

Market researcher IDC estimates that by 2026, 60 percent of organization will require their IT vendors and partners to provide end to end visibility of their sustainability process.

Here are five things you need to know about HPE FS’s “Force For Good Financing Program,” other new HPE FS programs aimed at driving sustainability, and the HPE sustainability sales offensive.

Meeting The Force For Good Sustainability Requirements

HPE is committed to making it “simple” for customers to determine if they meet Dun & Bradstreet ESG Intelligence rankings requirements to qualify for the more attractive financing, said Sheeran.

Under the Force for Good Financing program, HPE said customers must meet a pre-determined ESG score range within what it called a recognized industry standard index.

“We will work with our customers and partners to identify if customers qualify based on that ESG index with Dun & Bradstreet,” Sheeran said. “If the customers don’t know we’ll come back and tell them very quickly.’

HPE FS is also encouraging customers to make sure that if they have made sustainability commitments it is recognized on the Dun & Bradstreet index.

The Dun & Bradstreet index is aimed at providing a universal rating for sustainability.

Dun & Bradstreet, for its part, claims its ESG intelligence offering provides coverage of sustainability performance data on over 35 million global public and private businesses

Dun & Bradstreet said the data set for its ESG intelligence offering is based on “leading” ESG standards including The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP).

“The customer has to have demonstrated a commitment to sustainability,” said Sheeran. “We measure that through an industry wide program: Dun & Bradstreet’s ESG index. If the customer has a particular rating on that index they will qualify for the Force For Good financing.”

The Right Time For A Sustainability Sales Offensive

The HPE FS Force For Good Financing Program is hitting the market with increasing momentum for sustainability initiatives, said Sheeran.

“All the feedback I get from the partner community is that it is an imperative now to be able to have a credible conversation with their customers about how they can manage their IT estate in a sustainable way,” he said. “So for sure the time is right for this.”

HPE FS’ Gold said in a blog post that “there is not one conversation with customers or partners where we don’t discuss this topic.”

The HPE FS Force For Good Financing supports both new and existing customers that demonstrate a commitment to sustainability, said Sheeran.

“This is for all our customers, whether it is enterprise customers or SMB customers around the world, this is not limited to any one set of customers, it is for all our customers around the world,” said Sheeran. “We’ll work with our partners to make sure that we can identify those customers and work with those customers to on board them for this program.”

HPE FS is committed to helping partners on the sustainability journey by helping them navigate the increasing number of “rules and regulations” on sustainability around the world, said Sheeran.

HPE Is Now Providing Global On-Site Decommissioning Of Products For Asset Upcycling Services

HPE is for the first time offering global on-site decommissioning of older IT products in 31 countries for HPE Asset Upcycling Services.

Previously, HPE had only offered on site decommissioning to a select group of large customers, said Sheeran.

“Given we are seeing such a demand for this we wanted to make sure this is available for all our customers worldwide,” said Sheeran.

“Global on-site decommissioning provides an auditable and secure way to decommission assets on site,” said Sheeran. “A lot of customers want the assets (decommissioned) and handled before it leaves their secure premises… This includes deinstallation of data and overriding of the data sitting in those assets along with pack and ship services to make sure those assets get back to us in a correct manner.”

The on-site decommissioning of products encourages customers to turn old IT assets into cash to finance digital transformation.

“A lot of our customers around the world struggle with legacy assets that have reached the end of their life, that are obsolete,” said Sheeran. “Making sure that we can do an on site decommissioning in an auditable and secure way is really important. Sanitizing the data on site is really important to our customers.”

HPE Adds Nimble Gen 5 All Flash Arrays To HPE Certified Preowned Portfolio

HPE is adding Nimble Gen 5 all flash arrays to the the HPE Certified Preowned Portfolio.

The HPE Certified Preowned Portfolio has become more popular in the wake of supply chain constraints on newer products, said Sheeran.

Often, HPE Certified Preowned Portfolio provides customers with a “faster deployment” scenario given supply constraints around the world, said Sheeran. “This is obviously with us right now,” he said.

“Certified Preowned offerings is seeing very nice growth over the last couple of years,” said Sheeran.

Certified Preowned is also leading to reduced IT waste as a result of those products getting a second life, said Sheeran.

In Europe, some public sector agencies mandate that certified preowned is included as part of contract offerings, said Sheeran.

HPE partners are increasingly leveraging HPE FS asset upcyling to fund digital transformation for customers, said Sheeran.

Partners are having deeper conversations about how customers “can free up value that is trapped in legacy assets in a sustainable way,” said Sheeran.

An Epochal Moment For Sustainability

The new HPE FS Force For Good Financing represents an epochal moment for the global technology sustainability movement and the IT circular economy.

HPE has provided $1.1 billion to customers over the last three years with asset buyback and asset upcycling with its commitment to the circular IT economy.

“This is freeing up trapped capital on our customer’s balance sheets, making sure we have a way to create value through those legacy assets to boost our customer’s digital investments,” said Sheeran.

The HPE FS sustainability comes with more customers attuned to freeing up trapped assets to drive digital transformation through the circular economy, said Sheeran.

“IT assets are sometimes sitting on balance sheets, depreciating away, it’s trapped capital,” said. “As IT budgets become tighter and tighter customers are looking at how they free up that trapped capital to boost their investments in new technologies. That is what we are all about in HPE FS. It is not just financing solutions to help customers with their digital transformation. It is how do we free up that trapped capital to help customers accelerate their digital transformation journey.”

To that point, the HPE Force For Good Financing includes an option to include HPE’s Pack and Ship Services to simplify the return process for decommissioned IT assets. “This is important because it gives customers an incentive to return the assets to us to keep that circularity going,” said Sheeran.

As part of Force For Good, HPE is including an HPE Circular Economy Report so that businesses can track and observe their own contribution to technology sustainability efforts. The HPE Circular Economy report captures the carbon emissions savings customers are receiving with their HPE sustainability efforts.

The HPE FS Force For Good Financing builds on HPE’s impressive track record of helping customers fund digital transformation through asset buyback and asset upcycling services to retire underutilized,obsolete or redundant assets.

Over the last three years, HPE FS has given a second life to 8.2 million technology assets including 2.3 million servers and 3.1 million PCs and notebooks that have been refurbished as certified preowned.