Partner Services Opportunities in Enterprise Networking

Customer success and technology lifecycle are top of mind topics for our partner community. How we engage with our customers and support them through their customer experience journey are as important as ever. With increasingly complex technology choices across so many different architectures, it’s not always easy to understand what types of services are the most suitable for each specific customer.

Many Cisco partners have developed practices based on their key priorities, customer base and market singularities. Specifically, in the area of Enterprise Networking, partners can capture various opportunities to expand their services practice.

Cisco services help partners enter new markets and grow their business. There are different reasons why you might consider leveraging some of them, for example:

Developing a new practice for a new technology or architecture.

Addressing a specific customer request outside of your area of specialization.

Covering for experienced engineering resources unavailability.

Cisco DNA Center [1] is the network management and command center for Cisco DNA, your intent-based network for the enterprise. Deploying it, can provide many service opportunities. For example, configuring it for the first time.

To get started, ask yourself a few questions to determine which services are best suited for your needs.

The first question is whether or not you have successfully deployed Cisco DNA Center in the past? If the answer is yes, then the next question is to check if you have experienced engineering resources available to address your customer’s expectations? If the answer is also yes, you can deploy Cisco DNA Center using your own resources and you can rely on our existing Support Services for any escalations.

However, if the answer to either of those questions is no, then you have to ask yourself if you want to build your own Cisco DNA Center practice. If you do, then you should consider leveraging Cisco’s Mentored Installed Networking Training (MINT[2]) program, which provides an expert on-site all along the way deploying the solution together and learning at the same time so that you can start building your own expertise and eventually have a Cisco DNA Center practice.

On the other hand, if it is not your intention to build this practice, because your area of expertise, market opportunity or business model doesn’t require it; or simply because you do not have the engineering resources available when you need them, you should consider our Enterprise Networking Quick Start Services[3]. These services provide a quick fix to accelerate deployment and adoption of Cisco DNA Center with a predefined scope and prescriptive design that provides the fastest way to test the value of Cisco DNA Center. You do not have to worry about deploying the solution.  You procure the services from us and we do it for you.

In addition to these two examples, we also have Ask-The-Expert (ATX) and Accelerators (ACC)[4] which are designed to help you accelerate your implementation of new technology through targeted sessions with Cisco experts, either through one-on-one remote coaching or one-to-many interactive webinars.

If you would like to find out more about all these services options, please check out our Partner Success Sales Webinar for CX Enterprise Networking, where you can find a deeper overview on each of them.

The most important thing is for our partners to be able to provide the best possible experience to customers, while also growing their own services business market share.  We all know it can be difficult sometimes to know when and where to leverage all the resources available, but make no mistake, we are all on this journey together and we want you to succeed.

To learn more about Cisco’s Services please visit the Cisco Customer Experience website at 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.

[1] https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/cloud-systems-management/dna-center/index.html

[2] https://cs.co/MINT

[3] https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/products/se/2019/8/Services/cx-cisco-dna-automation-quick-start-services-aag.pdf and https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/products/se/2019/8/Services/cx-cisco-dna-assurance-quick-start-services-aag.pdf

[4] https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/learning_center/cisco-dna-ask-the-experts