This year’s Cisco Partner Summit took place digitally, as most events have in our pandemic environment. Yet, with so much uncertainty thus far in the year, Cisco’s eyes are on the future. During the event, they shared insights and tips on how to help partners take advantage of opportunities to be agile, relevant, and most importantly, profitable. The first step is to prepare to be “future-ready.”
Changes to the Cisco Partner Program: Reaching Gold
To embrace the future, Cisco announced some of the biggest changes to its partner program in the past decade. Today, it is paving the way and giving opportunities for more partners to reach Gold status. Diana Blass of CRN reports more on the four roles within the Cisco partnership program and the solutions to help enhance IT agility:
Customer Experience Translate into Customer Success
In a recent blog post, Thimaya Subaiya, VP of Customer Experience Solutions and Acceleration at Cisco, highlighted new additions to the CX Success Portfolio and incentive program to help partners “grow, innovate, and win.” Staying agile while being future-ready will be the key to success in the future digital world, he noted, which is why his team rolled out new ways for partners to stay innovative while becoming more profitable.
Cisco Global Brand Team Protecting Against Grey Markets
While the world continues to change, there are more bad actors cropping up every day. This concern prompted Cisco to bring together a group of investigators, analysts, and engineers to secure the supply chain and protect partners from grey markets that sell counterfeit products. Working together with law enforcement around the globe, this team detects and protects against counterfeit manufacturing.
The World Might be Changing, But Cisco’s Partner Strategy Isn’t
During his session at Cisco Partner Summit 2020, Jeff Scharritts, Senior Vice President of America Sales at Cisco, noted that while there is significant change happening around the world in our pandemic environment, Cisco’s commitment to its partners isn’t changing. In fact, Cisco partners remain the core of Cisco’s market strategy and future-ready plans.
And the Award Winners Are…
Each year at Cisco Partner Summit, the company announces partner awards. While the event was virtual this year, it didn’t stop the award announcements. In a recent blog post from Oliver Tuszik, SVP of Cisco’s Global Partner Organization, he noted that 19 global partners received top honors and were selected “for their innovation and the ways in which they are growing their businesses while delivering business outcomes for our customers.” Each of them is already working hard at being Future Ready!
