Meet the channel manager: HP

Kaaren Lewis joined HP in January as the general manager, channels and indirect, of the Enterprise business group. She has spent 20 years in IT, both on the vendors' side with the likes of Dell, IBM and Compaq, and on the reseller side as the head of ANZ sales and marketing for $5 billion-turnover hardware, software and service business Insight. She now heads up the channel operation for HP’s servers, storage, services, networking and cloud offerings. Last year, HP launched its landmark PartnerOne program, which was a major talking point when Lewis spoke to CRN.

Programs

“Feedback from our channel is that PartnerOne is the premier partner program in Australia, which is wonderful feedback. The portal is called HP Unison. It gives partners a streamlined, collaborative, end-to-end approach, available 24/7, through our portal. It is customisable so it can be set up for a partner with things like joint business plans, deal registration and reporting that is specific to them. They set it up with what they want to see: leads and opportunities and compensation, all in the one place.”

Partners

“We do more than 70 percent of our business through channel partners and it is growing. This comes from Meg Whitman all the way down. I’m not at liberty to give specific numbers locally, but at an APJ level, we have more than 20,000 partners that sell our solutions, one of the largest ecosystems in the world. Our partners have a long history [with us] and are very loyal to HP.”

Experience

“The Australian industry is channel-centric so in all my roles in multiple vendors, I was dealing with and selling through the channel. Partners in Australia are under huge and increasing pressure: how do they support such complex business models for our customers? Our customers are so varied with varied needs. The things I needed [from vendors] when I was a reseller were to be predictable and to make it easy to do business with because I am out there representing you. That is my goal coming to HP.”

Missteps

“I don’t know if it is around missteps, but what I have learned after a long time in the industry is around feedback – soliciting feedback, having forums for partners to engage with the vendors, talking about the specific pain points and taking those insights and actioning them. I can see what has worked and what hasn’t. HP’s way of engaging and collaborating works – and if people copy that, it is a lovely compliment.”

Looking ahead

“My ultimate goal is supporting partners to delight our customers, and for HP to become the go-to technology provider for the new style. One of the aims is specialising and having specialised partners and encouraging them to provide their solution to customers rather than a ‘point product’, as in whether a server or laptop. Customers want solutions and different types rather than point products and that is across the entire ecosystem, whether resellers, ISVs, system integrators, distributors or alliance partners.”