Your mother gives advice over the phone. Columnists give advice in newspapers. Now Cisco Systems partners are going to have to get used to getting automated advice from the company over the Internet.
It’s one of two online services Cisco announced Monday to encourage its partners to maximize services opportunities and make it easier to deal with the networking giant.
Called Cisco E-consulting, the automatic advisor is a computerized system that looks at a partners’ sales history and makes recommendations tied to best practices on how to boost the sale of services.
The second change is the creation of Cisco Service Contract Centre, which keeps track of service contracts and warns partners in advance when they need to be renewed. The centre replaces some five different contract management systems that had accumulated over the years.
The moves have been praised by one of the company’s London, Ont. partners. “The concept is absolutely the right trend,” Peter McMahon, vice-president of Protek Systems.
Vendors are increasingly pushing more reporting to VARs, he said, and that, combined with slimmer hardware margins, is putting a strain on partners.
“The fact that Cisco has tried to simplify (contract management) is exactly where vendors need to go,” he said.
As for the automated advisor, he wants to see how easy it will be to use. But, he added, “anything that can help us be more streamlined is a good tool.”
Although available around the world, in this country Cisco E-consulting will measure sales and delivery capabilities against Canadian partners, said Raja Sundaram, Cisco’s senior director of services for channel partners.
With partners registering every hardware and services sale with Cisco, it’s not hard to keep track of what they’re doing. Cisco has created a computer program that lines up those sales with services that could be sold.
“Ideally, you’d want every piece of equipment you sell is covered by a services program,” said Sundaram.
“By articulating what your attach rate is it also gives you an opportunity to understand how much money is there right now as an opportunity is there for you.” It will also show how much money the partner missed by not renewing a support service.
In addition, the system tracks service calls the partner has to make to measure service delivery and customer satisfaction.
The system has a self-learning knowledge engine, Sundaram said. It asks the partner the relevancy of a suggested solution and how long would it take to implement suggestions. The answers are aggregated and hone further recommendations to similar partners.
Cisco Service Contract Centre might be called a more practical way to help partners sell services by being a one-stop online place to find the status of all Cisco contracts.
“This will help channel partners generate quotes and orders quickly, to track renewals and easily manage contract accuracy,” said Sundaram.
Partners then can see if they have the right coverage for each customer.
It also gives Cisco the ability to remind partners when contracts are about to expire, helping them see their sales pipeline and targets.
The Contract Centre began operating yesterday. Cisco E-consulting began yesterday for many of what Cisco calls its 1-Tier partners, which include VARs and system integrators. So-called 2-Tier partners, who sell packaged services to smaller customers will be bought into the system later.
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