In last week’s blog, Kobi Elbaz, SVP & general manager of HP’s Global Channel Organization, offered an update on HP’s Amplify program focusing on Data Insights. This week, Elbaz shares the latest on Amplify Impact, HP’s sustainability program. He also previews Curiocity, HP’s new training and partner community engagement platform.
Amplify Impact is a voluntary program designed to help channel partners become more sustainable. It is currently available to channel partners in 43 countries. HP plans to expand the program globally to all types of channel partners during the next two years. “We have a clear objective that by 2025, at least 50% of our channel partners will be part of Amplify Impact,” said Elbaz. “This is a big objective for us on our journey to become the most sustainable company.”
According to Elbaz, 3,500 HP partners worldwide (35% of the company’s channel partners) currently participate in Amplify Impact. Elbaz views the drive towards sustainability as a team effort that is good for the planet and drives new business. “Every year, we track how many new businesses we grow thanks to sustainability. In our last fiscal year, we generated more than $3.5 billion dollars of new businesses in terms of sustainability. Our message to the channel partner community is that it’s good for the planet. It’s also good for the business because you might not win the business if you didn’t have sustainability.”
HP provides channel partners with education around sustainability and HP-developed tools and capabilities to drive sustainable business practices. “Not every channel partner has the resources and the know-how to do it,” acknowledged Elbaz. “We offer it for free and help them to bridge what they want to achieve and how we can help them to achieve their goal.”
When asked about the greenwashing accusation from one of the company’s harshest social media critics, Elbaz pointed out that HP publishes a sustainability report annually with metrics and other relevant information. “There is much effort in HP around sustainability, and we are committed to reporting our progress, our carbon footprint, and what we do around recycling,” he responded. “This is a report that we send to the market. When you publish something like that, it is with all the needed compliance and due diligence. Facts talk, and we publish them every year in our report.”
Better Engaged
The Curiocity engagement platform was developed based on feedback from channel partners and HP research. “It’s a platform that covers all the elements about how we want to engage with the sales rep,” explained Elbaz. “We all know that if a sales rep is better trained, they’re more productive. And we also know that people that work in a more collaborative community are more productive. The idea was to create one place for our channel partners to find our training and product information.”
The platform also allows partners to engage with each other and HP sales reps and receive reward recognition. Curiocity launches on November 1. The launch will be a phased approach beginning in the U.S., UK, and other countries. “Our objective, and it’s quite ambitious, but I’m sure we’re going to achieve it, is that by the end of 2023, we will have more than 100,000 sales reps on this,” said Elbaz.
He also described this as another way that HP works with channel partners. “We are a channel-driven company, and everything we do is based on feedback from the channel,” concluded Elbaz.
HP’s latest Amplify Impact initiative is indeed an ambitious one and it will be interesting to see how serious its channel partners in the U.S. embrace it and if the company achieves its goals. If anything, it will be customer driven rather than U.S. dealer channel driven. It’s something to think about.
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