It's tough for a small VAR to get the most out of a relationship with a big vendor. Who do you talk to when you have a question? What products will make you the most money? Where do you find the information you need when there's so much of it?
HP is looking to make it easy for small VARs to engage with the company through a new partner portal that includes tools to help partners with the answer to those questions and more.
"Every time they log in they will see a list of the top five things they can do to make money with HP," Meaghan Kelly, vice president of channel strategy and SMBs within HP's Solution Provider Organization, told Channel Insider.
The portal lets SMBs know the best SMB-centric products that are offering the best rebates. A custom configurator tool allows partners to look at a product or a list of products they've created and instantly see how much money they will make by selling those products.
The site also features chat with a live HP sales person who can help partners as they use the site.
Partners will also get immediate access to marketing dollars and they can earn up to $1,500 per quarter.
In addition, a web syndication tool allows partners to pull HP product information into the partner's website.
"Partners have told me: 'HP, you are so big and so complex you sell so many products. Where do I even begin?'" Kelly said. "They say, 'I'd like to engage with HP but I don't know who to talk to, I don't know what products to sell.'" The new site is designed to help fix that.
The portal also features a community section that enables partners to network and collaborate with each other.
Partners must sign up for the portal to use it, but it's free of charge. Existing partners can use their existing name and password.
HP has about 25,000 partners overall and 16,000 of them are SMB partners.
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Hewlett-Packard 
