Cisco has added new specialisations and incentives to its partner programme as it shifts its business towards subscription and lifecycle selling.
Cisco introduced a new “Lifecycle Incentives Programme” to push partners to do more than just resell its products and instead drive software activation and adoption among customers.
Cisco claims this is the first business specialisation focused on “customer experience”.
It claims the programme will reward partners for “lifecycle selling” and help them to “modernise” their services businesses.
The programme also rewards partners for expanding customer deals to include more Cisco products.
It includes a new “Use Accelerator bonus” for activating more of the firm’s software-based network automation offering – Cisco DNA Center.
Lastly, the Lifecycle Incentives programme includes an initiative called the Solution Starter. This new initiative will “entitle” Cisco customers to work with a partner that is able to offer implementation services. In theory, this could mean partners that do not offer these services will lose customers to those that can.
The networking giant announced three new support offerings to help its channel partners to sell services.
There is “solution-level” coverage for all areas of its portfolio. Partners are now entitled to a primary point of contact with Cisco specialists across more than 30 solutions and 250 products. The offer has been extended to include support for software subscriptions as well as collaboration products. Support for Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA) and Security will come in Q2.
The firm has updated its Business Critical Services (BCS) 3.0 offer. This is a packaged analytics and AI tool, available as an “Essential” or an “Advantage” package.
It has pledged to provide packaged managed services for its partners to resell. Partners can sell a service managed by Cisco while adding their own value-added services on top. These include a managed detection and response package, Managed Secure SD-WAN and Unified Communications Manager Cloud.
