HPE Channel Chief Leslie Maher Pledges ‘Faster’ Deal Registration

'We believe the new deal registration process will allow us to review them and approve them faster and then just be really clear on accountability and predictability on how they get approved,' says HPE North America Channel Chief Leslie Maher.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise North America Channel Chief Leslie Maher said the edge to cloud as-a-service powerhouse has made improvements aimed at speeding up partner deal registration approval.

“We have enhanced deal registration over the past quarter,” said Maher in an interview with CRN. “We believe the new deal registration process will allow us to review them and approve them faster and then just be really clear on accountability and predictability on how they get approved.”

The changes are aimed at “simplifying” deal registration engagement with HPE, said Maher. HPE is still “actively” working on deal registration issues, she said.

The genesis of the deal registration changes came from Maher’s many meetings with partners during her first 90 days on the job as the new HPE North America channel boss.

HPE partners, who did not want to be identified, said they are still being briefed on the changes and waiting to see how they play out in the field.

“We are waiting to see how the deal registration is going to work and what the specific improvements are,” said a top executive for an HPE partner. “HPE is still communicating and clarifying how it is going to work.”

Key to making the deal registration effective, said the executive, is making sure that there is some rep involvement in the process to avoid partners just blanketing every customer as a potential GreenLake deal. “There is the potential for a lot of partner conflict with a fully automated process,” he said.

Another sales chief, who did not want to be identified, also said it is critical for HPE rep involvement in the deal registration process.

“My biggest problem with deal registration is sometimes a larger partner who knows nothing about the customer’s IT environment gets approval because they get a heads-up from a friend in the account,” he said. “Some of those larger partners have a bunch of people scouring any opportunity and filing for any and all deal registrations even if they have no knowledge of the customer or the account.”