HP adds value to MPS business

 

According to company officials, India is a critical market for the company and the first country in the APAC region to get this new services from H.

HP announced the new HP Express Decision Portal, making it easier for channel partners to manage and grow their Managed Print Services (MPS) business. The company representatives indicated that India is a critical market for the company and India is the first country in the APAC region to get this new services from HP.

The new portal is part of the HP Mananged Print Specialist program, which allows channel partners to leverage HP's MPS coverage nationwide. This structured program offers a suite of tools and resources that allows partners to focus on the MPS sales process and customer relationships without needing to make a substantial investment in new infrastructure.

HP will make this portal available in late 2014. This platform is a cloud-based application that includes a pricing feature that offers great visibility into partner's expected revenue. The portal also comes with business proposal and opportunity management functions that make it simpler and faster for partners to capture MPS business opportunities.

The portal will connect partners and HP sales resources within an intuitive, easy-to-use platform. It will also allow for multivendor device support so partners can optimize, manage and improve mixed fleet print environments for their customers. Other offerings include assessment, pricing, proposal generation, deal profitability, funnel management and management reporting. The partner can also tract various services and products through this portal and thus arrive at decisions faster and effective manner for customers while providing valuable insights to their customers in terms of their printing requirement, replenishment and services.

Bill Avey, vice president, Partner Managed Services, HP said, "Partners are looking for tools and resources that help them to stay ahead of competitors and meet evolving customer needs." He further added, "This program helps channel partners in India access cutting-edge tools, solutions and innovation to accelerate their MPS business."

The HP specialist program was launched to channel partners in July 2013 and has since expanded to partner in 8 cities. This program enables partner to engage with customers across verticals including telecom, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and ITeS. Avey informed that the partners enable their customers to avail around 30% savings through this program on an average but will vary depending on various factors like company growth, consumption peaks and more. Also, this program provides enough tools to create more stickiness with customers for a longer time period as the tie up is usually a multi-year cost per page contract."

Avey stated, "We want to be the infrastructure provider to these customers through our channel partners. These services will drive customer loyalty and account control and many other benefits for HP channel partners." Today, this program has two categories Agent and Resell wherein the later will be supported extensively by HP (sales & support)apart from other features. The model is shared revenue shared risk model.

The new HP program has enabled channel partners to add MPS to their portfolio offerings and win new contractual business. Additionally, partners can now leverage HP's nationwide coverage to acquire new customers with a larger geographic footprint in India.