3 Big Ways HP Amplify Is Driving Partner Profits

‘When we bring solutions into the market, we think about how we bring them and grow them through the channels, so channel is part of our DNA,’ HP Inc. Channel Chief Kobi Elbaz tells CRN as the IT giant plans to further expand its HP Amplify partner program.

HP Inc. Channel Chief Kobi Elbaz said the IT giant is “doubling down on the channel” by giving partners more ways to grow and drive profits through the company’s two-year-old HP Amplify program.

In a recent interview with CRN, Elbaz said channel partners drove more than $7 billion of growth for HP in the last three years, which he credited to the company’s focus on product innovation, the pandemic-induced rise of hybrid work culture and the way HP keeps partners top of mind with new products.

“When we bring solutions into the market, we think about how we bring them and grow them through the channels, so channel is part of our DNA,” said Elbaz, who took the channel helm as general manager of the Palo Alto, California-based company’s global channel organization in late 2021.

Elbaz said partners are “super critical for HP” — with indirect sales accounting for close to 90 percent of the company’s annual revenue — which is why HP Amplify is a top priority for the company.

“Our success is dependent on the channel and our collaboration with the channel,” he said.

With progress “going well” for the integration of HP’s $3.3 billion acquisition of peripheral and videoconfencing giant Poly from last year, the company sees a bigger opportunity for partners to sell from HP’s expanding portfolio that help customers embrace hybrid work, according to Elbaz.

“There are a lot of pockets of opportunities that before we couldn’t address. Conferencing is one great example. We’re all working in hybrid work. Think about the statistic: There are 90 million conferencing rooms in the world; less than 10 percent of them are equipped with video. So think about the opportunity for us and the channel partners. And Poly was 100 percent channel-driven, so we are doubling down on the channel,” he said.

As the company plans to expand HP Amplify’s offerings further, one solution provider executive tells CRN that the partner program is one of the best in the industry.

“I work with a lot of partner programs throughout the industry, and I think HP’s is top notch. I think it’s head and shoulders above just about every other program,” saidMike Turicchi, vice president of strategic relations and marketing at Manassas, Va.-based HP partner NCS Technologies.

What follows are three big ways HP Amplify is already helping channel partners grow and drive profts.

HP Amplify Data Insights

Launched in 2021, HP Amplify Data Insights empowers partners with “channel intelligence” by giving them access to powerful data analytics to grow sales.

“Every company that uses data is growing two times faster than the rest of the industry, than the ones that don’t use data,” Elbaz said.

Available to partners in the Power and Power Services tiers, Amplify Data Insights collects 14 billion data points a week from 98 percent of HP’s channel partners to help them uncover opportunities to sell new products and services, according to Elbaz.

These opportunities can be identified through insights such as a partner being under-represented with customers in a certain vertical or customers that are due for a warranty renewal.

“The whole idea about Data Insights was we get data from the partners, we share with them data back, and we drive action-oriented solution that can help us to drive the results,” Elbaz said.

Turicchi, the executive at HP partner NCS Technologies, said his company’s use of Amplify Data Insights has already been paying off since it was introduced in 2021.

“Amplify Data Insights has provided some value to me, personally in my role, to look at the overall business trends, what we‘re selling and what our customers are buying,” he said. “So that gives us some good foresight into what we should be promoting and what we should be targeting moving forward.”

The next big step of Amplify Data Insights is to integrate HP’s data into sales systems run by partners, which the company plans to enable through APIs it’s developing with pilot partners, according to Elbaz.

HP Amplify Online

Another key element of the HP’s partner program is HP Amplify Online, which is designed for commercial and retail partners that are focused on selling through digital storefronts.

“It’s all about working closely with both our commercial and retail channel partners to win in the digital shelf space,” Elbaz said.

This work includes A/B testing with partners to determine “the best way to position our product” to drive sales, according to Elbaz. Considerations for A/B tests include the way product descriptions are written and which images are used to advertise the product.

“We see good results in terms of the ones that we’re working with closely. Conversion rate is higher, average selling price is higher. As a result of that, profit is high,” he said.

Amplify Online also helps partners with search engine optimization, so that products they’re selling are positioned higher in search results.

HP Amplify Impact

With HP aiming to become “the world’s most sustainable and just tech company,” the IT giant is using HP Amplify Impact to help show partners that becoming more sustainable and focusing on issues like human rights and digital equity can lead to new sales opportunities.

“It’s good for the planet, but we managed to demonstrate that it’s good for the business,” said Elbaz.

In 2021, for instance, HP generated $3.5 billion in in revenue from deals where sustainability played the main factor in procurement.

Elbaz expects more customers will attach environmental, social and governance (ESG) requirements to IT deals in the future. This, in turn, will translate into new opportunities for partners.

“It’s quite clear for us that more and more customers will have an ESG metric in the [request for proposals] they’re doing,” he said.

For example, France’s government has now required its offices to include sustainability metrics for IT procurement, including a requirement that 30 percent of must be refurbished, according to Elbaz.

“It’s going to be something that I think the entire ecosystem needs to watch,” he said.

The Amplify Impact initiative was introduced in 43 countries where HP has 10,000 partners. Out of those partners, about 3,500 have signed up so far.

“In the next two years, we plan to roll it out globally and offer it also for retailers,” Elbaz said.

Turicchi, of NCS Technologies, said his company was one of the first to pilot Amplify Impact, implementing many of the initiative’s concepts into how the partner does business. This even includes the way NCS Technologies’ new headquarters was built.

“It was a great framework for us to work from and gain insights and ideas and incorporate those into our building,” he said.