CX Announcements at Partner Summit 2019

Partners and Portfolio Together

Hello from Cisco Partner Summit 2019 in Las Vegas! While normally “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”, today we are excited to share with everyone our Partner Summit 2019 CX announcements.

I have the privilege to lead our CX Portfolio and CX Partner model, and today’s announcements are all about our commitment to our partners. What that means to me is a commitment to listen to our partners as we design the portfolio, a commitment to work jointly with them as we develop the portfolio, and a commitment to be transparent as we refresh and innovate our portfolio.

Maria Martinez, EVP, Chief Customer Experience Officer, says it best, “there is no CX future without our partners.”  With that as our mantra, all of the following CX announcements were designed for partners and with partners after 10,000 hours of conversations directly with them.

Portfolio Announcements

CX Success Portfolio. The “Success Portfolio” was deliberately architected to accelerate the success of our joint customers. We optimized the portfolio for partners to resell, build additional value into their solutions and sell more of their services.

Solution Support. The first announcement this year is that we are expanding the value proposition of Solution Support to include software subscriptions. Our joint customers will now be able to realize the value of Solution Support on both hardware and software, no matter how they choose to consume Cisco’s products.

BCS 3.0. Business Critical Services, with its packaged expertise, analytics and insights, helps customer perform and transform. Today we announced: (1) alignment to 5 IT roles; (2) two BCS standard packages – Essentials and Advantage; (3) guidance and coaching sessions at multiple points in the lifecycle; and (4) recommendations powered by Cisco’s intellectual capital.

Operate. Our next major announcement is how our partners and Cisco can team on three new Operate Offers: MDR (Managed Detection and Response), Managed Secure SD-WAN, and Unified Communications. These offers are designed to be complementary to our partners’ offers.

Preview of Collaborative Intelligence. At the heart of the future of the CX Success Portfolio is “Collaborative Intelligence”, Cisco’s unique approach to surfacing the right expertise, learning, and data at the right time, to accelerate our customers path to success.

Partner Model Announcements

The launch of the Customer Experience Specialization and the Advanced Customer Experience Specialization give our partners the opportunity to develop the right resources with the right training and skill sets to build a practice centered on customer lifecycle.

The Customer Success Manager certification and renewal manager verification exam launched in August. With Cisco’s industry-leading certification, partners can train and certify the best customer success professionals that are sought after by our customers.

Digital Renewals. The launch of a simplified renewal process provides partners with greater visibility to renewal opportunity data, and will include automated quotes in the renewal notifications.

Success Hub Refresh. The newly refreshed Success Hub website provides “Always On” Partner engagement within a digitized platform. This one stop shop digital experience provides the training, certifications, resources and tools partners need to transform their business and accelerate faster. http://successhub.cisco.com/

We are convinced that lifecycle is Cisco and our partners’ largest joint opportunity.  And as Denny Trevett, VP CX Partner Model, said in his blog, Together We Win with CX lifecycle.