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)