Stick with us, Hewlett Packard president and CEO Meg Whitman urged attendees at the company’s Global Partner Conference in Las Vegas. The worst is almost behind us and the best is yet to come.
“The last couple of years at Hewlett Packard have not been easy,” Whitman said. “Together we are making progress.”
Joined on stage by chief operating officer Bill Veghte and chief marketing officer Marty Homlish in a two-hour keynote that felt at times like an audition for the channel’s continued loyalty, Whitman described how HP plans to rectify past mistakes and pursue future opportunities.
Problems with HP’s PartnerOne channel program placed high on the mistakes side of the ledger. “Our organization is sometimes too complex and difficult to do business with,” Whitman said.
In response, HP announced a series of updates to PartnerOne today designed to make sales planning, lead management, and market development funds administration easier for the channel. “We aim to make it simpler and more consistent to do business with HP,” Whitman explained.
And more lucrative too, she continued. Also announced today was a new PartnerOne compensation model that eliminates the minimum sales thresholds resellers had to exceed in the past before collecting commissions, as well as the maximum compensation caps HP formerly imposed. “Our objective is for us to be the most profitable partner that you do business with,” Whitman said.
Whitman also promised to take a hard line against HP sales reps who cut partners out of deals, a major sore point within the channel. “We now have a very clear policy about taking business away from our channel and going direct,” she said. “My message to you is this simply will not be tolerated.” HP account managers who ignore that message, she promised, will be punished or fired.
More broadly, Whitman sought to persuade partners that HP remains a force in the IT industry with a bright future ahead of it. Emphasizing the company’s “strong financial footing,” Whitman noted that HP had $10.6 billion in cash flow last year and had paid down billions more on its debt. It has also put its seemingly endless leadership changes and strategic detours behind it once and for all, she insisted.
“We’re here, we’re in place, we’ve got a strategy, and we’re executing,” Whitman assured her audience.
Central to that strategy is selling solutions for what Whitman and Veghte both referred to as “the new style of IT,” an amalgam of mobility, cloud computing, social media, and big data.
“HP is the one-stop shop from hardware to software to services to deliver best-of-breed components,” stated Veghte, whose presentation outlined the company’s “innovation agenda” in areas ranging from network infrastructure to security, cloud computing, and beyond. HP’s “iconic brand,” broad product lineup, and deep heritage as a provider of both consumer and enterprise solutions, Veghte argued, uniquely position the company for success in the new era of computing presently taking shape.
Now the only question is whether partners fatigued by years of turmoil and unpredictability at HP will embrace that vision. “I’m excited about HP’s future and I’m confident about HP’s future,” Whitman said. Time will tell if channel pros feel the same way.
