HP ready to ring in printer and PC group changes

HP has almost completed ringing in changes at its Printing and Personal Systems (PPS) group, promising investment in sales staff to achieve channel growth.

Along with restructuring in its Enterprise Group, HP says that changes in its newly formed PPS group, incorporating its printer and PC divisions will soon be revealed to its channel.

Paul Hunter, Vice President, PPS, UK&I, told ChannelBiz UK that the changes as part of the merger are finalised, with sales staff in place.

“Its complete, we spent three months working very hard on it, we have been exceedingly diligent with it,” Hunter said. “On Monday of this week we have all our teams in place, though we won’t finally announce them to the market for another few weeks because we are still going through a consultation process, but the team is there.”

We asked whether the substantial cuts to staff at HP would have an affect on the numbers of staff working with the channel, and though specific details were not discussed were told that investment would be increasing.

“Net-net we will be investing in the sales organisation,” Hunter said.  “We will have better sales coverage for our channel sales organisation, yes.”

One of the benefits of the PPS merger for partners will be focus on a simplified structure for partners to deal with, as HP takes its partner’s concerns on board, which will be reflected in its partner programme.

“We will be much more customer oriented, rather than thinking about some of the internal processes,” Hunter said.  “We have had feedback from the channel that we have taken on board.”

Pascal Bourguet, UK&I Channel Sales Director, PPS added: “We had to improve our way of business, being simpler, being easier to deal with, having a Platinum programme which is easier to understand.”

With partners involved in what was the Personal Systems Group enduring a difficult time following the discussion of the sale of its PC business, Bourguet acknowledged that a level of trust is one of the main demands from its partners.

“The channel partners are telling us that they need trust, confidence, and they need profitability. On the confidence [of partners] there area few things on which we are working, go to market clarity has been a topic,” Bourguet said.

Despite the noise of the wholesale changes at the firm, not to mention the wider difficulties of economic troubles and slow PCs affecting the firm, there is optimism for channel growth.

“In 2012 our channel business has grown, our expectations are for that to be repeated and more. We have aspirations for growth in all customer segments next year,” Hunter said.

Bourguet added that, following changes to its structure, HP is ready to push for more growth: “We are almost at war, that’s the determination to grow and make it work,” he said.