Digitization, AI, Cloud and Big Data are just a few of the many trends in the IT industry that are driving the Partner evolution in delivering a new customer experience (CX). This transformation includes changes to the business models, technology practices and skillsets that partners have to embrace in every interaction with their customers. Let’s look at a few of the focus areas and how Cisco can help in this journey.
We are working hard at Cisco to create a framework to support partners on this transformation journey, while making sure they are successfully performing with our existing services, offers and solutions that are critical to ensure our customers’ success. Together with all of our business entities and architecture leadership, we are analyzing our existing offers and making sure we provide the tools, the enablement content and the guidelines to support our partners in this journey.
The main idea behind this effort is to make sure both our Partners and we at Cisco are able to be as close as possible to our customers, in order to support their digital transformation efforts and make sure that ultimately, they are successful in achieving the business outcomes they pursue. A vehicle to attain this objective from a technology consumption perspective is to focus on a services and software subscriptions and renewals model. In order to achieve this, we must be an integral part of our customers’ lifecycle.
By working with our partners and customers, we have identified three pillars that are the most important for our partners to build a Customer Experience practice.
Organizational focus and structure
Defining the outcomes that partners want to deliver, the different partner roles required and which digital tools will be ideal to support these efforts.
Monetization
What is delivered today, how to stay profitable and how to evolve offers while at the same time maximizing partner margins and revenue.
Operationalize
Drive operational efficiency and flexible delivery options by defining what are the outcomes we want to deliver, what are the different partner roles required and what tools will be ideal to support these efforts.
We are fully committed to our Partner and Customer Success, which is why we have started this journey. We wanted to share a sneak peak of what is coming down the line, and you will be able to find out more details at Cisco Partner Summit 2019, whether you attend in person or virtually. I also invite you to listen to our “CX Partner Insights – EN and DC Update” Webinar in our Partner Success Guide, where we explain more about this work.
We also want you to give you substantial examples of what you can do today. As we mentioned before, there are many new technology trends that are changing the demands that our customers pose to both Cisco and our partners. The solution support offers that we have can help our partners deliver the benefits and the value to our customers, and we want to make sure that that our partners understand them.
The journey that Cisco is taking with our Partners and Customers is a continuous effort that will benefit all parties involved, regardless of the stage you are in. There are multiple resources that you can leverage such as our Customer Success Journey Map and our ask_cx_partners@cisco.com mailer for any Customer Experience Partner related queries.
To learn more about Cisco’s Services, please visit our Customer Experience website http://www.cisco.com/go/cx
For more information about how our Partners can make the most out of these technologies please check out our Partner Success Guide http://cs.co/customerin.
A very clear path to a successful transformation journey.