Special Focus
Redefining Partner Model
By Dhaval Valia
In February this year Cisco created the Worldwide Partner Organization by merging the previously separate channel organization and strategic alliance organization into one unit.
In line with this development, Cisco India has revamped its partner organization to create five partner classifications—Architecture, Transformation, MSPs and SPs, Gold and Silver, and Commercial (distribution-led)—and appointed separate leaders to manage each partner category.
Arun Dharmalingam will handle the Distribution-led Commercial partners, Samir Mishra will oversee the Architecture partners, Ajay Pal Singh will be responsible for Silver partners, and Arzan Singpurwalla will manage the Gold, MSP and SP partners. Srikanth Natarajan will drive the enablement and engagement of Transformation partners, while R Annamalai will be in charge of partner enablement across the board. B Raghavendran will lead the entire India Partner Organization.
Raghavendran explains in detail the rationale behind the new partner organization. “In June 2009 Cisco transformed its business model to focus on three key architectures and 30 market adjacencies. It is but logical to transform the partner organization to execute strategies around this new model. If you notice, we are moving away from calling it a channel organization to calling it a partner organization—and the reason is simple. With the architecture-led go-to-market, Cisco’s addressable market has expanded manifold into several new technology areas and industry verticals. Thus, our partner ecosystem needs to expand beyond the traditional networking domain.”
New partner models
Transformation partners are partners who the company will work with to build new solutions and applications around the 30 market adjacencies it has identified such as smart grids, smart buildings, virtual conferencing, facilities management, and physical security. Some of the Transformation partners signed on by Cisco include companies such as Accenture, Infosys, Mindtree, L&T and Tech Mahindra. “We are in discussions with many more such companies, and see a huge opportunity in creating applications and vertical- relevant solutions for sectors like power, telecom, media, entertainment, government, education and real estate,” Raghavendran informs.
MSP and SP partners will include telcos, ISPs and other large service providers with whom Cisco will work to create new business models and market routes. “Under this new partnership we will work with service providers to create cloud and other types of managed service offerings. With Airtel we have been working closely to create services such as VPN-in-a box and branch-in-a-box built on a Cisco platform. These services are eventually offered to the end-user through commercial partners,” explains Raghavendran.
Driving architectural play
Gold and Silver partners contribute a large chunk of Cisco’s worldwide revenue, and close to 75 percent in India. “They are critical to drive market adoption of our new architectures—VCE, collaboration and borderless network—among large and mature enterprises,” remarks Raghavendran.
The Architecture category has been created for partners who focus on providing solutions around the three primary architectures. For these partners Cisco has launched a new program called Teaming Incentive Program (TIP). “The objective of TIP is to ensure that partners and Cisco engage with customers from the start in order to encourage them to take an architecture-led approach rather than a product-based approach,” Raghavendran explains.
All Cisco tier-1 and tier-2 partners can become architecture partners by specializing in any or all of the three architectures. Cisco plans to invest heavily in training several of its partners to become architecture partners. It has already shortlisted 30 senior sales and technical executives from Gold and Silver partner organizations to provide them with specialization training at discounted rates. Says Raghavendran, “This is a rigorous program which will be conducted over the next 12 months through Web and onsite training. We will bear almost 75 percent of the cost. In the second phase we will train our Commercial partners who are keen to build a strong Cisco architecture practice.”
Widening the commercial base
Distribution-led Commercial partners will be another important pillar of Cisco’s new partner organization and its growth strategy.
Over the past 12 months, the company has realigned and reinvigorated its distribution. It has added two more distributors apart from Ingram Micro and Redington—Compuage for fast-track and small business products, and Comstor to drive the advanced technology portfolio.
“With new distributors and the realignment of the distribution structure, we have closed the geographical and technological coverage gaps, and optimized existing partnerships for our high-value and small business products,” states Raghavendran. “We have greatly succeeded in improving market coverage and penetration through distributor-led marketing programs and schemes. A strong indicator of the success of our commercial strategy is that earlier our distributors were billing roughly 600 unique resellers every quarter. Over the past three quarters, this figure has gone up to 1,100. We have been able to reach out to smaller resellers in smaller cities.”
To further market coverage and penetration, Cisco is introducing the new concept of territory business managers whose job it will be to work with distributors to enroll the smallest of small resellers in small cities, and train and enable them to sell.
New partner programs
To accelerate architecture adoption, Cisco has enhanced several of its existing programs and launched new ones. For data center and virtualization architecture, it has enhanced its Data Center Accelerator Program and added the Data Center Advantage Incentive Program. The vendor has also launched a new program to promote the adoption of the unified computing system for data center partners, and rolled out the new Cloud Incentive Program to get partners started on providing private cloud solutions to customers.
On the collaboration front, Cisco recently launched several new programs such as Collaboration Breakaway and UCCX Ignite for its Express contact center portfolio.
It is also enhancing the Fast Track 2 program meant for velocity and small business products.
Delivering on partner promise
The company has created two new and important portfolios in its new partner organization. These are for managing operations and strategy, and enhancing partner enablement to ensure that the new partner organization delivers on its promise.
“We want be consistent in our programs and engagement with partners,” says Raghavendran. “Make it simpler, faster and easier for them and their customers to work with us. We also need to streamline operations to optimize supply chain and inventory flows in order to have a shorter time-to-market. These two portfolios will be key to executing the overall partner strategy in a smooth and consistent way.”
Another key Cisco initiative is the formation of a partner management team. “Earlier, our account management team was customer-facing; in the new formation it will be aligned with partners. This is an indication of the faith we are posing in our partners,” Raghavendran says.
Cisco has nearly 500 named accounts among large enterprises; in the commercial space it has 750 named accounts.
“The overarching objective of the Partner Organization is to create value-based programs, ensure partner profitability, invest in building partner capabilities, improve operations and simplify processes to make it easier for partners to do business with us,” says Raghavendran. “But most importantly we must ensure the consistent achievement of all these objectives.” |