Post-merger channel policy of new HP in place

The new HP India is the first to integrate channelpolicies of erstwhile HP

and Compaq as one organization, across Asia. In this new channel policy, it has

integrated the two sets of channel policies such as credit terms, cash

discounts, stock price protection and inventory management into one.

Elaborating on this new policy, Prasenjit Sarkar, Commercial Channel Head, HP

India says that HP’s channel policy was proving to be fruitful and partners

have welcomed this new move.

HP has realigned the incentive programs for all three tiers of its channel

hierarchy – wholesalers, resellers and sales executives. For the horizontal

partner accreditation, now there will be premier business partners, premier

partners and registered partners across.

Inviting Compaq partners to register themselves with HP

Prasenjit Sarkar

For the resellers, it will have the final tier performance plus (FTPP) in

place. For sales executives, it has merged the erstwhile reward schemes of

pre-merger HP and Compaq, called superstar loyalty and e-Points, by announcing

e-Points across the board.

To facilitate this, the company has invited all Compaq partners to register

themselves under the new HP’s premier partner family. "This is being done

for all the product categories, right from printers to servers to commercial

desktops," reveals Prasenjit.

Talking about the vertical program category, he said that these programs will

be product-specific and all the partners of this new entity would be eligible

for the same. Though, it has renamed few channel programs to eliminate the

ambiguity.

He adds that the new entity would now be able to offer better programs to its

partners as they can bundle up product offers.

The company has also put in place a regular auditing of all the channel

programs by an external auditing agency, which wasn’t the case for Compaq.

Besides this, a new CRM function has also been introduced to look after the

interests of the channel partners.

SHWETA KHANNA



(CNS)