Changes to the Partner Ready program prove that we are still far ahead of the pack
August 27, 2018 • Blog Post • Paul Hunter, Worldwide Partner Sales Leader
IN THIS ARTICLE
- Partners can now enjoy faster rewards, on every deal they do
- Enhanced rewards for investing in technologies HPE has identified as key to the future of compute
- A community-based knowledge program elevates everyone using HPE Partner Ready program
Everything we do is aimed at making it easier for our partners to do lucrative business with us
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is the only technology company that has always had partnership hard-coded into its DNA. I believe it is one of the attributes that has made us successful. We spend a lot of time thinking about how we can continually improve the relationship with our partners and increase the sophistication of what we do together, which is why the enhancements we announced today around our Partner Ready program have been 6 months in the making.
The program we have developed is specifically designed to be simple, but it takes an incredible amount of work to drive simplicity. Weve had people from across the world, working in different time zones and representing diverse customer and partner needs, each of whom has been focused on finding the best way for us to evolve our Partner Ready Program. Our mission was to offer the maximum reward and opportunity to partners with the minimum complexity.
We have big plans for the future of our business—with the development of new and exciting innovations that will change the way people live and work, as well as industry-changing payment models and services—but we can only successfully drive these initiatives if we have our partners by our side. The channel is the way in which we extend our capabilities and our reach. Partners are afforded the same attention and support as our own sales force.
We've always been Partner Ready but now we have become partner proactive. We have been looking at the shifting landscape around us, with a number of emerging market trends, and decided that HPE needs to enhance the way we engage with and compensate our partners. We consistently seek ways to strengthen and develop the program so that partners can continue to count on us to lead and drive growth through predictable earning potential. We implement minor changes all the time, but the major industry shifts around us convinced us that now was the time for a more comprehensive update.
As organizations look for new ways to operate with greater agility, harness more data and drive digital transformation, they are turning to hybrid IT strategies, shifting workloads to the edge and changing the way they purchase and consume IT. HPE has an innovative portfolio of products and services that enable customers to successfully take advantage of these trends. The enhancements to the Partner Ready program encourage and reward channel partners for helping customers adopt and deploy new technology, leading to beneficial business outcomes. The adoption of hybrid IT offers customers the best of both worlds and the market for helping customers with this transition is growing.
As we move forward, the main enhancements and advantages for partners will be:
- Rewarding partners for their investment in market growth areas with quicker access to higher membership tiers and accompanying benefits
- Simplifying program design to make partnering with HPE easier with more predictable rebate levels
- Creating global consistency across the program with visibility across the entire sales cycle, one consistent transaction process for quote configuration and a faster pricing process
- Driving technical enablement and excellence in the channel to accelerate partner sales capabilities, aligned to workloads, with new training
When it came to designing the update, we listened to the feedback we were getting from our valued partners. It became clear to us that HPE was doing a lot right, and that we should preserve the foundation of our industry-leading program, but we could still do more to improve it by simplifying the design globally and fostering profitable growth. We tasked ourselves with giving partners across the globe the chance to earn rewards from the first sale, without gates or caps—creating a much simpler and more predictable model.
Our competitors often use targets with the theory that targets lead to better performance. We are convinced that this is not the best way to change behavior and increase profitability. When partners are rewarded for over-achieving, they may reap large rewards but they are unpredictable, meaning that partners can never be sure that they will hit the trigger point and cannot then accurately forecast revenue and plan investments. Partners are also dependent on the targets set. By rewarding partners equally for the first and the millionth sale, we are helping everyone put a dollar figure on the value of their business with us. We are enabling new and smaller partners to start building relationships with HPE as they see rewards from day one, as well as make investments for the long term, safe in the knowledge that the rewards are predictable.
We also focused on encouraging partners to sell the solutions that we have identified as the future of HPE and IT in general. We are rewarding them for investing in market growth areas such as hybrid IT and are making it more profitable for partners to recommend consumption-based IT solutions such HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity to customers.
The other part of this update that excites me greatly is that it we are rolling out our own global technical community where partners will be able to interact and learn from one another, creating a more knowledgeable and more unified ecosystem than ever before. Stay tuned for more informationabout this community when it launches in FY19.
It is an exciting time for technology and innovation. So much is happening, so fast. At Hewlett Packard Enterprise, as an industry-leading company with the spirit and flexibility of a startup, we are uniquely placed to keep pace with the changes. In my mind, that does not just mean technological innovations. We have a duty to keep examining and updating our culture, our relationships, our processes and the value that others gain from partnering with us. I believe that this update to our Partner Ready program is in that spirit; it does not just keep pace with the market, it sets a pace that sets us apart from the competition. Thank you to the HPE team that has worked so hard to make the simple attainable.