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The Evolution of Cisco's Partnering Strategy

03.07.16

By Diane Krakora, CEO

Wendy-Bahr-Cisco-300x174.jpgWendy Bahr, SVP of Global Partner Organization at Cisco, was fantastic in her first time as master of ceremonies for the partner summit. She not only provided a warm and friendly welcome to the thousands of partners in San Diego, she was also very clear and detailed describing the next evolution of Cisco’s partnering strategy: simplicity, alignment and evolving the value exchange.

Simplicity

Wendy quoted Sir Richard Branson saying, “Anyone can make something complex, it takes real talent to make something simple.” She was being nice, as the brash Branson actually said, “Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It is hard to keep things simple.” Honestly, simplicity is easier to say than to execute, particularly for a company with a broad product line. Another industry example, IBM, has been focused on simplifying their partner programs for 5 years, and even with the latest revision announced a couple of weeks ago, they still have a long way to go. With Cisco’s nearly constant acquisitions, they are turning the once router-switch-hum-focused vendor into one of the world’s largest technology companies; thus Wendy's announcements of a renewed focus on simplicity.

Wendy provided two examples of how she plans to simplify partner engagement. The first example simplifies the partners’ administration of the Volume Incentive Program (VIP). She plans to collapse the 4,600 SKUs that qualify for this program into four categories – hardware products, one-year license, multiyear license and perpetual license – and four payout levels. Her second example is inwardly focused – streamlining Cisco’s internal processes and infrastructure by folding the services, cloud, software and traditional resale programs into one overall structure. Wendy offered that this simplification will release resources (people and funds) to be utilized to help partners in new ways. Partners often plead for vendors to simplify their administration and engagement processes, however, this internally focused initiative should actually accelerate the partners’ profitability more.

Alignment

The word alignment really piqued the partners’ interest. Many who I talked with were very excited about becoming more aligned with the Cisco sales people. Who doesn’t want to have a Cisco sales rock star to work with on deals? The big move here is the announcement that Cisco will have another partner summit this year, in November, to align very closely with the Cisco sales kick-off. Yes, there will be two partner summits in this leap year. Moving the partner summit to immediately follow the Cisco internal kickoff event helps to align the internal and external sales teams with product messaging and roadmaps, marketing campaigns and yearly goals. I’d love to see these two events actually together – overlapping – but that might be the death of the Cisco execs. Each event is exhausting enough alone.

Value Exchange

There was a lot of discussion around evolving how Cisco “exchanges value” with partners. This was confusing to me for quite some time, as those seem to be internal Cisco words. I don’t hear partners walking around saying, “let’s exchange some value.” I believe I’ve determined it means gives and gets. What do partners give Cisco and what do they get in terms of incentives, enablement and support? As Cisco continues to expand from their hardware reseller-channel-only roots into software solution providers, service providers, cloud aggregators, MSPs and ISV partnerships, they are committed to looking at the different gives and gets for each of those partner types – or better yet, partner roles. As an example of this evolution, Wendy announced the launch of Cisco Engage – a digital marketing platform to provide partners digital marketing experts, tools and support, helping to increase their success in driving awareness and demand generation. I'm so excited about this focus! We at PartnerPath have commented before about how this help is much needed, and created this Infographic to help educate partners on the importance of digital marketing.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Cisco announced so many platforms, products and programs in the three days, I’m surprised they will have anything else to announce at the November summit. I look forward to hearing what they come up with.

Diane Krakora headshotDiane Krakora is CEO of PartnerPath with two decades of experience defining the best practices and frameworks around how to develop and manage partnerships.

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