HP has rolled out a new training and enablement portal for members of its Amplify partner program and enhanced that program’s sales data analytics platform.
The company announced those changes along with the global expansion of its Amplify Impact sustainability program, during the HP Amplify Executive Forum event today in Palo Alto, Calif.
Called HP Curiocity and designed to serve as a single, worldwide hub for partner education and collaboration, the new portal unveiled today includes a virtual university with courses on sales, product, and solution-related topics as well as a centralized community forum for one-to-one and broader discussions with other HP partners.
Users will also have access to exclusive promotions, contests, and recognition opportunities. A phased rollout of the new platform is scheduled to begin November 1st.
“We look at our channel partners as extensions of our salesforce, and as such we want to make sure that we have a good platform to connect all the channel salesforce together with HP,” says Kobi Elbaz, senior vice president and general manager of HP’s global channel organization.
Updates to the HP Amplify Data Insights platform announced today include increased automation, access to customer-specific information, and direct integration with partner CRM systems. HP is piloting APIs that will enable the last of those modifications now and expects to ship final versions globally within the next 12 months.
First launched nearly a year ago, Amplify Data Insights is designed to help HP and its partners increase sales by pooling information on customer purchase histories, buying patterns, and business challenges. Some 14 billion individual data points are added to the system every week, says Elbaz, adding that the system has identified renewal and upgrade opportunities involving 30 million PCs and 10 million printers in the last 12 months. Data Insights users, he continues, are growing twice as fast as other Amplify members on average.
Though participation in the platform is voluntary, 98% of Amplify members have agreed to share data with HP so far.
Introduced early last year, the Amplify Impact program aims to make launching a sustainability initiative simpler for partners. Enrollment is free and starts with an automated self-assessment that ranks newcomers against their peers, before proceeding to a range of sales and other training courses. All members must do to remain in the program is report once a quarter on deals that included a reuse component.
Over 10,000 partners in 43 countries belong to the program at present. HP announced plans to make that opportunity available to all partners worldwide within the next two years, and has set a goal of inspiring at least half its channel to sign on by 2025.
HP won $3.5 billion worth of deals during its 2021 fiscal year in which Amplify Impact was an influencing factor, according to James McCall, the company’s chief sustainability officer.
“It’s not only good for the planet, it’s smart for business,” he says.
HP reports financial results for the third quarter of its current fiscal year next week. In the four quarters prior to that, the company recorded over $6 billion in channel revenue growth.
“We are a channel-driven company,” says Elbaz. “Historically, we always work through the channel, and we are very happy to see that our channel business continues to grow.”
Elsewhere today at the Amplify Executive Forum, HP unveiled a new set of PCs and peripherals for hybrid workers as well as a new subscription ink program and new SMB-scaled printers.
