HP Announces Amplify and MPS Developments

(September 24, 2021) - HP Inc’s Reinvent partner event on September 22 included some important announcements related to its Printing business.

Last year, HP introduced a partner program called Amplify. This caused some controversy at the time over the level of customer data that resellers were required to provide. However, as HP has previously pointed out – and which it repeated in a press release this week – 98% of eligible partners have opted in to report data.

Now, after uploading more than a billion data points on a weekly basis, the OEM has launched Amplify Data Insights, which is described as a “new partner intelligence platform designed to turn data analytics into rich data insights from HP, partner and third-party sources”.

“The events of the past 18 months have dramatically altered how customers engage with brands and ultimately make technology buying decisions – data plays a critical role in our ability to both monitor and respond quickly to these evolving customer needs,” said HP’s Chief Commercial Officer Christoph Schell.

“With HP Amplify Data Insights, HP is delivering on our collaboration promise by turning partner data into deeper insights, designed to deliver more positive customer outcomes and enable long-term partner growth and recurring revenue.”

HP has broken down the insights into three main areas – descriptive, predictive and prescriptive – described as follows:

Descriptive Insights to benchmark performance and drive customer segment strategies:

Enriched combination of HP and partner data on performance relative to their country or market, such as sales growth, product performance and inventory levels.

• Revenue and unit sales by industry and company size
• Rankings by industry and company size
• Ratios to hardware by industry and company size
• Inventory levels by HP product group, category, and product line
• Sales mix by customer industry
• Compensation and rebate history

Predictive Insights to anticipate customer interest and purchase decisions:

Customer purchase propensity estimations based on HP proprietary algorithms based on customer refresh cycle data, warranty expiration heatmaps and product lifecycle intelligence.

• Product warranty and renewal heatmaps
• Customer buying intent predictions
• Customer engagement topic insights
• Engagement evolution by customer
• Customer engagement propensity and intent
• Customer interest topics based on the past six months

Prescriptive Insights to up-sell, cross-sell and optimize marketing campaigns:

Recommendations on specific sales and marketing actions for individual company and customer groups to upgrade and cross-sell hardware and services.

• Customer installed base recommendations
• Product recommendations for fast-track campaigns
• Product recommendations for long-tail campaigns
• Product recommendations by customer

Participating Amplify partners reporting within HP Amplify data quality guidelines will receive immediate access to the new platform via the HP Partner Portal.

At Reinvent, HP also announced Managed Print Flex, a new cloud-based MPS subscription service it says will be a recurring revenue opportunity for channel partners. The initiative is currently being piloted with select resellers and customers in the US, UK and Germany, and is expected to become widely available early in 2022.

The base subscription includes:

• Supplies auto replenishment
• Break-fix services with two-hour call back and next business day onsite support if not resolved remotely
• Short-term one-year commitment with automatic renewal
• HP Roam to enable secure printing from multiple locations
• All printers consolidated in an analytics dashboard and billed under single contract
• The Wolf Security pack

“After a year and a half of unprecedented change, it has become abundantly clear that flexibility is paramount,” said George Brasher, General Manager and Global Head, Print Services and Solutions, at HP.  “With this in mind, we have taken the complexity out of managed print services and made it as simple and seamless as possible. In fact, customers don’t even choose a plan. Our [..] Smart Plan adjusts automatically to the best cost option based on what was actually printed.” (HP)

Palo Alto (CA), USA