Cisco Distribution Sales Visibility: Another Step toward Ease of Doing Business

Last year, Cisco launched Distribution Sales Visibility (DSV) and began deploying it, country by country, across our distribution channel. Distis in Canada and the US are all now using DSV.

A Step toward EoDB

The whole point of DSV is to make Cisco easier to work with for our distributors and for the resellers they support. In most cases, it reduces the crediting of bookings to the Cisco sales team to hours vs. days, and removes the $100k order minimum. It also helps distributors leverage existing inventory and deliver the value-added services that give partners a competitive edge. It replaces Channel Bookings Neutrality (CBN) – a welcome change for many of us – and puts distribution ordering on equal footing with direct orders.

Yes, CBN is going away.

We started with POS. Under that system, Cisco account managers received sales credit for distribution orders several days after the order was booked.  Sometimes it took weeks.  Compare this to direct orders, which receive same day credit, and you can see how distribution became a less productive and less attractive option.  POS also made sales forecasting difficult, negatively impacting visibility, bookings attainment, and customer satisfaction.

We implemented CBN in FY10 to solve these problems, but we were still left with certain limitations that slowed down product delivery and management of inventory and returns. Distribution was still working at a disadvantage and it made us a less competitive fulfillment path.

Benefits of DSV – Distributor, Partner, Cisco Sales

DSV helps make distribution as attractive a route to market as direct, and sometimes more so because it allows our partners to leverage distributor value-add and decreases time to market.

The benefits are across the board for everyone in the sales cycle.

For partners, the process of ordering through distribution does not change, but there is now a single process for assigning sales credit to the Cisco field – and it’s fast, equalizing direct and 2T routes to market.  Partners and their customers will also get improved lead times, since Distributors are able to leverage their inventory for any order.

For our distributors, this is another step in our quest to improve your ease of doing business with Cisco. We eliminate the complex and resource intensive CBN process for virtually all orders, and we enable you to deliver any order from inventory, increasing turns and improving cash flow.

Nicko Roussos, a director of the Cisco Solutions Group at Tech Data, has been using DSV and has this to say: “DSV is a program that solidifies Cisco’s commitment to distributors and the partner community at large.  CBN enabled all stakeholders to work together collaboratively, substantially reducing the channel conflict that may have existed previously.  DSV furthers this agenda, but does so with immense operational efficiency.  All parties involved can now refocus the afforded capacity to add incremental value into their customers.”

Implementation Schedule – Americas

We are well into our rollout plan in the Americas, with Canada, the United States, and Miami export into Latin America up and running.   We plan to expand into Latin America in our FY18.

Questions?

You’ll find additional resources and training materials on Cisco Distribution Central.