Cisco Capital to extend finance and training

Networking vendor lowers entry level for financing deals and encourages partners to skill up

Capital idea: Cisco will finance projects containing 40 per cent non-Cisco product

Cisco Capital is to increase the availability of channel financing options and ramp up its training for partner staff as finance comes to the fore this year.

The vendor has traditionally offered financing options for end user projects containing a minimum of 70 per cent Cisco products and services. For general business, this limit has now been lowered to 60 per cent.

To drive adoption of the networking firm's first foray into the server space – the Unified Computing System (UCS) portfolio – the limit has effectively been removed completely.

Stuart Hall, European markets business development manager for Cisco Capital, said: "For a UCS-driven deal [involving] ecosystem partners like EMC and Hitachi, we will accept an unlimited amount of third-party technology."

Cisco's Changing the Conversation training scheme for partners' customer account managers will also continue throughout Cisco's next fiscal year, which starts at the beginning of August. The programme involves end user finance heads educating resellers on what customers are looking for from financing.

"We are ensuring that the training is constantly updated," said Hall. "It is a different session now to what we were talking about 18 months ago, when customers were not buying anything. There is now [a focus on] different budget availability."

By the end of the current fiscal year Cisco will also decide whether or not to extend its EasyLease zero per cent financing offer in its current form. Late last year the scheme's upper limit was doubled and deals worth up to $250,000 (£166,000) are now included. Hall indicated that the offer is still popular with partners.

"As with all Cisco programmes, there is a review," he said. "We are getting towards the end of the decision-making process; the general consensus is that it is still a very powerful tool."

Alison Moore, operations director at UK Cisco partner Interactive Telecom, claimed her firm has benefited from Cisco financing options.

"We work in the SME market and it is very challenging to be able to provide a solution sell," she said. "We have to be able to provide a differentiator."