Highfive Unveils New Partner Program, Channel Chief

Highfive, the video conferencing provider, on Tuesday unveiled a new partner program led by Greg Popham, a former Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) executive, as vice president of global channel sales.

The company now is working to enable more VARs and service providers to sell Highfive directly to customers with full whitelisting and provisioning capabilities. The program “empowers its channel partners with speed, an ease of doing business, and plenty of potential for scale,”

Popham, former U.S. director of small and medium business sales at HPE, tells Channel Partners the company saw an opportunity to update and refresh its partner program to “make sure we were very channel friendly.” Popham joined Highfive in January, and before HPE held various channel roles at Avaya, Motorola and Symbol Technologies.

Highfive’s Greg Popham

Popham said he decided to join Highfive after more than eight years with HPE because of the ease of use of Highfive’s product and the company’s “great core group of leaders in place.”

“While we refreshed program, we’ve also looked at processes, pricing, deal registration, and the way we do things and work with the channel to make sure it aligns with our channel-first, channel-friendly mentality,” he said.

Highfive sought feedback from partners before making any decisions about the partner program refresh, Popham said.

“This is all about building a win-win opportunity for us and our channel partners,” he said. “We’ve added medallion levels … and opportunities for partners to earn incremental, front-end margin as well as back-end benefit. And from a goal standpoint, it makes it more rewarding for partners and provides greater opportunity for partners to control their fate and how they want to go to market.”

Highfive offers recurring channel margin on contract renewals so partners get ongoing revenue streams instead of a one-time payment. The company also is enhancing support to its current and new partners by providing refreshed tools, deal registration and a new partner portal designed to make reselling and provisioning Highfive seamless.

In addition, Highfive recently added an asset disposition program, making it easier for resellers to help end users rip and replace existing technology, but recover value still left in the hardware.

As Highfive looks to add sustainable partners to its program, it has expanded to Canada, Europe and Australia.

“We do have presence from a channel expansion perspective in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and Ireland, and then throughout the balance of the European Union as well,” Popham said. “Highfive is committed to the channel. It’s our top priority to build a best-in-class partner program that fosters a healthy relationship between Highfive and our valued partners. And like our products, we’ve made the program so it’s easy to use, easy to understand, and easy to sell. We believe this puts the power to scale within our partners’ own hands.”