Cisco 360: Simplifying the Partner Journey, Maximizing the Impact

Rodney Clark, SVP of Partnerships and Small & Medium Business, Cisco, and Elisabeth De Dobbeleer, SVP of Cisco Partner Program, Cisco are on a mission. At the recently concluded Cisco Partner Summit 2024, Cisco unveiled its new partner program, the Cisco 360 Partner Program, which aims to redefine how partner value is recognized and rewarded. This program fosters shared success, enhances partner profitability, and simplifies the partner experience. Cisco is streamlining its partner structure by transitioning from four roles (Integrator, Provider, Advisor, and Developer) to two main tiers: Cisco Partner and Cisco Preferred Partner. This change is not due to a lack of recognition of partners' diverse roles or a disregard for the ecosystem. On the contrary, Cisco is enhancing its focus on the ecosystem, acknowledging that partners can fulfill multiple roles. This simplified structure allows partners to achieve the Preferred Partner status through a value index that recognizes metrics spanning various business models.

Cisco currently boasts a best-in-industry partner program, recognized for its strong market presence, trust, and reliability. However, the program's complexity and operational challenges are hindering its effectiveness. The multifaceted benefits, while encouraging partner adoption, can take time to manage and track. As Cisco looks to evolve its partner program, it focuses on simplifying the process and shifting towards outcome-based metrics. By focusing on profitability and operational efficiency, Cisco aims to ease the transition for partners and ensure a smooth evolution of the program.

In today's technology-driven landscape, the traditional roles of vendors and channel partners are evolving. While technical and logistical value-add have long been the norm, a more customer-centric approach is becoming essential for success. As businesses increasingly prioritize technology as a strategic asset, buying decisions are shifting from IT professionals to business stakeholders. This trend demands a new paradigm where partners must prioritize delivering value that directly aligns with customer business outcomes.

To meet this challenge, partners must transition from a product-centric to a customer-centric approach. This involves understanding customer business objectives, tailoring solutions to specific needs, and providing ongoing support that drives tangible results. By focusing on customer success, partners can differentiate themselves in a competitive market and build long-lasting relationships. Ultimately, the ability to deliver value that resonates with business users will be a crucial determinant of success in the evolving technology ecosystem.

As customers increasingly prioritize AI-driven digital transformation and seek solutions that drive business outcomes, traditional models centered around product certifications and technical expertise are becoming insufficient. To address this, partners must transition from a resource-centric approach to an outcome-centric approach. By prioritizing the delivery of business value and aligning their offerings with customer needs, partners can better navigate the complexities of the market, optimize resource allocation, and ultimately enhance their profitability.

The new Cisco 360 Partner Program emphasizes a value-driven ecosystem, recognizing that customers' decisions are increasingly based on value and outcomes rather than just transactions. To achieve this, Cisco has redefined partner value through four key dimensions: foundational capabilities, performance, and engagement. These dimensions reflect how partners contribute to customer success, from influencing buying decisions to driving adoption and renewal.

Cisco is also introducing new designations, such as Cisco Partner and Cisco Preferred Partner, to recognize and differentiate partners based on their value and capabilities. These designations will be actively promoted to customers, enhancing partner visibility and credibility. The Cisco Partner designation tier will serve as the entry point into the ecosystem. In contrast, the Cisco Preferred Partner designation tier will recognize partners who achieve a specific position in the value index.

The Vision Behind the Program

Techaisle’s partner research identifies opportunities for growth within Cisco's partner program. While there have been challenges in fostering strong, collaborative relationships, these are being actively addressed. Partners have shared valuable feedback on enhancing engagement, moving beyond transactional relationships, and creating more opportunities to drive services revenue. Cisco is committed to aligning on a long-term vision that prioritizes customer success and partner profitability. Recognizing the importance of early involvement, Cisco is making changes to ensure partners can provide value-added services and consulting from the outset. By addressing awareness and seller sales compensation issues, Cisco aims to improve the hit rate significantly. To accelerate partner growth, Cisco is rebalancing investments to reward partners who drive exceptional customer outcomes rather than focusing solely on short-term sales goals. The vision is centered on the customer, aiming to provide more confidence and clarity based on their unique business needs. Cisco is proud of the strong partner relationships and the generous rewards awarded to partners meeting current standards. However, with customers demanding more, this shift is essential to continue driving mutual success and enhancing partner value.

The vision behind the Cisco 360 Partner Program is to create a more inclusive and value-driven ecosystem. Cisco recognizes that customers' decisions are increasingly based on value and outcomes rather than just transactions. This shift requires a new approach to partner engagement, emphasizing collaboration, innovation, and long-term growth.

Key Objectives

The Cisco 360 Partner Program is guided by several key objectives:

1. Increase Partner Profitability: Cisco aims to drive double-digit growth for itself while simultaneously increasing partner profitability. This involves creating opportunities for partners to grow and succeed in both the short and long term.
2. Simplify the Partner Experience: Simplification is a core priority. Cisco is committed to reducing complexity and making it easier for partners to engage with the company. This includes streamlining processes and providing clear metrics for success.
3. Expand the Ecosystem: The program aims to open doors to new partners who have not traditionally done business with Cisco. This includes partners focused on security, managed services, and other specialized areas.
4. Align with Customer Value: The program is designed to meet customers' evolving needs. This means focusing on value-based outcomes and ensuring that partners can deliver the required solutions.

Cisco's 360 Partner Program is a significant step toward addressing these challenges and fostering stronger, more collaborative relationships with partners. By simplifying the program, aligning incentives, and empowering partners, Cisco aims to drive mutual success and build a thriving partner ecosystem. The Cisco 360 Partner Program is a significant evolution in Cisco's approach to partner engagement. It is built on the principles of shared success and customer value, focusing on driving growth and profitability for both Cisco and its partners.

Program Structure

The Cisco 360 Partner Program is structured around four key dimensions of partner value: foundational, capabilities, performance, and engagement. These dimensions are designed to reflect the diverse ways in which partners contribute to customer success.

1. Foundational: This dimension focuses on partners' investments in the lifecycle and maturity of managed services practices. Partners who invest in these areas tend to achieve higher margins and more profitable growth.
2. Performance: Performance is measured in sales growth, adoption of more flexible licensing models through buying programs, and renewal ratio of business sold as a managed service. Cisco aims to align partner performance metrics with its own sales force, ensuring consistency and clarity.
3. Engagement: Engagement encompasses the entire customer journey, from landing deals to driving adoption and usage. This dimension recognizes the value of partners in helping customers' success realize the value of their purchases at every stage.
4. Capabilities: Cisco strongly emphasizes technical differentiation and skills development. Partners who invest in technical skills and certifications, such as CCIE and Black Belt training, are rewarded for their expertise.

 Cisco is committed to ensuring a smooth transition to the new program. Partners will have 15 months to adapt to the changes, and extensive support and enablement will be provided throughout this period. The transition will be phased, starting with the security portfolio and gradually expanding to other areas.

 Cisco aims to drive higher profitability for partners by aligning incentives with value-based outcomes, moving from 25+ incentives to one integrated partner incentive approach. This includes back-end rebates and front-end benefits such as programmatic pricing and deal registration. Cisco is evolving its flagship incentives, such as CSPP, VIP, and LCI, into an integrated, simplified Cisco Partner Incentive (CPI). The main reason for this integration is to align on consistent metrics and reward partners for landing, expanding, and renewing hardware, software, and services. This approach eliminates silos and provides a unified incentive structure that is easier for partners to navigate.

 Partners can access various resources through the Partner Experience Platform (PXP), including training and enablement. This platform provides real-time data and insights to help partners track performance and optimize their operations. Cisco is committed to supporting partner growth through investments in technical skills, specializations, and market opportunities.

Final Techaisle Take

Techaisle data suggests a decline in the significance of partner tiers in the buyer's decision-making process. While partner competency is still considered crucial in the initial stages of need identification, specialization, and certification play a more prominent role in the later stages of matching solutions to specific requirements and evaluating potential suppliers. Notably, only 17% of buyers consider partner tiers in the final stage of selecting a solution. This trend underscores the need for a simplified partner program that focuses on delivering value and expertise throughout the entire buyer journey. Cisco's decision to collapse its four-tier partner program into two aligns with this shift, enabling partners to focus on delivering specialized solutions and building stronger customer relationships. Although certifications/specializations were ranked top as critical partner selection criteria, 67% of enterprise customers and 87% of SMBs consider business outcomes delivered to be important. 

In the past, Cisco's partner feedback highlighted misalignment between field and partners’ teams. The organizational structure and compensation models often incentivized short-term sales goals over long-term customer relationships and partner collaboration. This led to rushed deals, a lack of focus on customer outcomes, and missed opportunities for partners to contribute value. Additionally, inconsistent communication and a lack of coordination between field and partner teams created friction and hindered effective collaboration. These factors ultimately impacted the overall partner experience and limited the success of joint initiatives. In the new program, Cisco aims to align partner performance metrics with its own sales force to ensure consistency and clarity. This alignment involves measuring sales, adoption, and renewal performance, which helps create a cohesive strategy between Cisco and its partners. By focusing on value-based outcomes, Cisco ensures that partners can deliver the solutions customers require.

Cisco is also working on integrating Splunk and Cisco. While Cisco boasts a larger partner ecosystem with more certifications, Splunk partners are often smaller organizations. Cisco's programmatic pricing and back-end rebates offer flexibility, whereas Splunk relies on front-end discounts and net pricing. Additionally, Cisco's deal registration process is less stringent, with a lower deal registration fee cap than Splunk. Cisco's partner program might be more attractive for larger partners seeking more comprehensive support and incentives, while Splunk's program could be more suitable for smaller, specialized partners.

While aiming to foster a more equitable and value-driven partner ecosystem, Cisco's Partner Value Index presents potential challenges. Data accuracy is paramount, and overemphasizing quantifiable factors could impact the fairness of evaluation. I believe Cisco will prioritize transparency, fairness, and continuous improvement in the index's design and implementation to mitigate these issues. By addressing these concerns, Cisco will ensure that the Partner Value Index effectively supports its partner ecosystem and drives long-term success. Cisco has intentionally made the value index inclusive and focused on the percentage of business vs. certain sales thresholds in a given product line, customer segment, or industry to avoid bias by partner types.

While some partners may be excited about Cisco's Partner Value Index's potential benefits, others may approach it more cautiously or dismissively. Some partners may feel that the index is overly complex or that it places undue emphasis on specific metrics. Others may need more resources or motivation to invest in the necessary activities to improve their score. As a result, some partners may choose to "get around to it" rather than actively engage with the program, potentially limiting their ability to reap the rewards of the index.

The Cisco 360 Partner Program represents a bold new approach to partner engagement. By focusing on shared success, customer value, and partner profitability, Cisco aims to create a more inclusive and value-driven ecosystem. With extensive support and resources, partners are well-positioned to thrive in this new program and drive long-term growth and success.

The partner’s most significant opportunity is in meeting buyer needs, which requires the vendor to empower its partners to plot a path that is attuned to buyers. Cisco is on the path of partner empowerment.