The vendor said it has spent the past 18 months developing its enterprise printing offering, including market analysis and identifying 15,000 accounts where HP was either not present or only present as part of the overall printing strategy.

This led to HP's first wave of coverage within 2,300 of its named accounts, according to Mark Quiroz, worldwide director of sales strategy for the global enterprise business at HP. "We have created vertical and horizontal offerings, and added more sales resources to talk directly to these end users." He added that although the company was talking directly to users, any resulting deals would be fulfilled through partners.

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"We then wanted to look at the next layer down, after the top 2,300 accounts. We recognized around 11,000 accounts in our territories where we could target," Quiroz said. "There was no point in adding more direct sales resources here; we need to focus on the channel and help them to have the end user dialogue and do the fulfillment."

Click here to read more about what HP calls Print 2.0.

To this end HP has launched the HP OPCH (Office Printing Channel Program). The new program will replace the existing regional programs and put everything under one umbrella scheme, Quiroz said. "Previously partners would have had to go to multiple channel programs—one for hardware, one for software, one for services—in order to get all the benefits available to them. It was very fragmented. With OPCH it brings everything together and will help drive a more consultative approach for VARs."

The OPCH includes two new partner levels: Office Printing partners and Office Printing Solutions partners. Qualified partners will get preferred and specialized branding, access to additional compensation and marketing funds and access to HP solutions sales tools. VARs that reach the top level will have access to compensation on supplies and consumables and access to sales and service of HP Edgeline products and solutions.

Quiroz said HP is the only vendor to focus primarily on the channel in the enterprise printing sector. "These [11,000] accounts were open before, but there are also new accounts that we will help VARs to get into," he said.