HP announced some pretty significant changes to how their Managed Print Services customer-base is serviced. One change, specifically, will affect a ‘small subset’ of their partner resellers, but will have a pretty wide impact: HP will be moving ‘thousands’ of accounts out of the HP-Direct category and into the reseller channel, giving those resellers the opportunity to work with accounts that previously would have been off-limits.
While I’m not going to say that I don’t understand the logic behind HP’s (and other OEM manufacturers; Canon & Xerox) current approach to large and major accounts (that is, they want to keep them in-house), I think it actually hurts them in many, but not all, cases.
Often, it is the reseller that has the local relationship, the reseller that has the contacts and the greater opportunity for interaction.
There are, of course, some companies that will only do business with the mother-ship, with the direct arm of whatever manufacturer they choose to work with, but I think the right model is to provide incentive to all channels to work together for the common goal, winning business.
There’s also the danger of losing control over the message, how well the customers are serviced, where the loyalty really resides (at the reseller).
Overall, I think this is a really good thing for HP resellers, probably good for HP corporate, and probably good for their customers.
