Ahead of Partner Summit – A Look at Partner Success

As we head into Cisco’s annual Partner Summit (November 4 – 6, 2019) in Las Vegas, Cisco Capital reflects on how it has enabled our partners to grow and evolve their businesses with its financial programs. Our partner program offers simple, secure and differentiated solutions that help our partners grow and adapt to changing to the changing buying needs of customers. Cisco Capital has played a vital role in helping partners transition to flexible business models that are helping them successfully provide more buying choices to customers.

Earlier this year, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins shared that 65 percent of our software revenues come from subscriptions. Partners are increasingly looking for ways to transition to consumption and revenue models that provide customers with more flexible payment choices. This is in large part due to the increase in consumption experiences using cloud and software-as-a-service in recent years, which has in turn created a need for subscription-based service options in more traditional enterprise business lines surrounding areas like data center and networking.

Cisco has always been committed to our partners and continues to thrive on a partner-led business model. In fact, our innovative financial models can help partners monetize upfront investments while still allowing customers to pay as they go. It’s a win-win situation that has truly impacted the way that Cisco’s partners do business, allowing them to better integrate our products and services in an ever-changing market.

Challenges around cash flow and risk management are also mitigated with the financial infrastructure that Cisco currently offers. Partners don’t have to worry about customers long-term viability to make payments or having the operational systems in place to accept recurring payments. Cisco funds a portion of the contract upfront so that partners can start making revenue off-the-bat and transition more seamlessly.

Partners like Presidio and Natilik have been able to streamline offerings into one contract, which is what modern customers are demanding. Consolidating the contract, invoice and IT provider can offer the flexibility needed for both partners and customers to scale a business, align cash flows to business usage and business outcomes over time.

Partners have had to be nimble and making the transition from collecting the entire contractual investment from a customer upfront to the adoption of pay-as-you-go models is not easy. However, we are more optimistic than ever based on the success that our partners have seen thus far. We’re excited to continue helping our partners excel and look forward to hearing more about their success stories at Partner Summit this year.