Training matters says HP

The printing business is growing and HP is elated about it. Having introduced
over 25 printer solutions aimed at the growing SMB market, the company is now
working on empowe­ring partners to take these printers to market. Herbert Koeck,
VP-Commercial Printing, Imaging and Printing Group, HP Asia said that in the
Indian market, HP would work closely with its partners in the upcountry cities
to enhance their technical skill sets. “We strongly believe that for a partner
to do a good job of selling our products, he has to have the necessary
competen­cies in place. This year, we will put a lot of emphasis on reseller
certification,” said Koeck.

Keeping in mind the fact it is the solution providing community that caters
to most SMB customers, HP is also going to work with these partners to improve
the capabilities in areas that are allied to printing. This would include
offering services aligned to networking, security and storage, which can be
aligned to setting up the printing network of the customer.

HP has recently introduced the Office Printing Channel Program, which is an
enhanced version of the erstwhile program for the value channel to make it more
broad based. Partners registered under this program would have access to HP's
entire imaging and printing portfolio. In addition to that it will also extend
to the hardware, service, solutions and supplies components so that more
partners can be drawn under the program.

There are two partner levels-office printing partners and office printing
solutions partners. Quali­fied partners will receive preferred and specialized
branding, access to additional compensation and marketing funds as well as the
solution sales tools. Prices of these solutions will be kept low to ensure that
partners can get SMB customers to migrate from standalone printers to a totally
networked printing environment.

HP has also revitalized its Solutions Business Partner Program (SBP), where
it works with other vendors whose solutions can be interoperated and integrated
for addressing specific business challenges.

The vendor has also come out with specialized printing solutions for
enterprises that can manage their output environments and streamline their
document workflow. The controlled cost printing allows these enterprises to
manage, track and recover costs for printing usage through multiple types of
billing. These range from pre-paid cards and debit applications for companies
with low printer output to per-user charge accounts. When integrated with
back-end processes, this solution enables tracking and billing of user groups
that can be broken down by individual need, user group size, department, or
geographical locations.

With all these initiatives on its anvil, it is not surprising that HP is
banking heavily on the solution providing community to entrench itself in the
SMB market. This will enhance its existing channel network with more extensive
training programs to achieve its business objectives in India.

(The author was hosted in Shanghai with HP)