'If partners don't check their relevance they'll have a problem' - new Cisco partner boss

Oliver Tuszik says partners can boost subscription sales by taking a customer experience-led approach

Cisco is encouraging its partners to focus on customer satisfaction in order to increase the subscriptions and services they sell, according to new channel boss Oliver Tuszik.

Tuszik claims that partners will be in a better position to sell additional services by boosting the level of care provided to customers and unlocking value in their solutions.

The networking vendor will introduce a customer experience certification for partners next year, which will assess how effectively partners are staying with customers through the entire life cycle of its products, as well as their ability to land repeat business and selling additional Cisco lines through subscription models.

The shift towards customer experience comes just months after Cisco appointed Salesforce veteran Maria Martinez to head up its customer experience strategy.

Speaking to CRN sister publication Channelnomics Europe in Las Vegas last week, channel boss Oliver Tuszik (pictured) said Cisco will continue to grow its recurring revenue business through its partners by incentivising them to invest in selling across the life cycle of its products.

"It is more than just adding some services somewhere; it is more about how can the customer get the full advantage of our solution so they don't only buy the product and install it, but they see the value and then activate additional functionality," said Tuszik.

"For the partner, it leads to more bookings and products but also additional services, because it is a rollout and adaptation process. And when the renewal comes up in the future, it becomes a product that customers not only use, but love. And if they love it, the chance of renewals will be pretty high - far higher than a case where they never use it."

Cisco has already announced extra incentives to encourage partners to begin investing in its customer experience-driven future. The firm announced two new bonuses to its VIP programme: an "activation bonus" for partners around its DNA Centre software line and an annuity bonus, which rewards partners for landing recurring revenue deals with customers.

Tuszik described these added incentives as a crucial first step for partners to invest in more life cycle services.

"We want to ensure that we move from a product being sold to its being used, so we are focusing on activation. This is the idea of starting the life cycle," he said.

"This is a small step, but an important first step to get into the life cycle, so we are paying a special bonus on products for this. There's one product that comes with our Catalyst 9000 called our DNA Centre, our management platform, which helps you to get incredible transparency on the entire network. We are paying the bonus under certain rules, for a certain time, if you activate a DNA Centre installation."

Tuszik was Computacenter Germany's CEO for 10 years before joining Cisco. Speaking from experience while working at the reseller giant, he empathised with partners about striking a difficult balance between running a day-to-day business and transforming for the future.

The IT market has had an extraordinarily healthy 18 months, with product reselling reaching double-digit growth for many partners, but Tuszik warned the channel not to be fooled into thinking this growth will last forever.

Several top channel partners - Computacenter, Softcat, World Wide Technology and Insight - have already warned that they expect their traditional reselling businesses to slow down over the coming quarters.

"I believe there's not one partner in the world that is not thinking about how to transform. Most of them started as simple PC resellers, then went to access points and switches. If you as a company are not always checking out your relevance to the customer and your differentiation and the value you are delivering, you will have a problem in the future," he said.

"On the one side, business is going pretty well for most of the partners of the world. They have a good performance. Whenever things are going well, why would you think about changing something? If you're happy, are you going to change certain things? Normally not.

"But if you know or foresee that this will not last forever, and you see an increasing new market, you need to see how you balance out that activity. You need to know where to invest in the future or how much do you just enjoy current business performance," he said.

The channel boss said the priority was to give partners a lot of time to start adding recurring revenues and subscription services with Cisco.

Although Cisco itself has been moving its business in the same direction for some time, Tuszik said the pace of this shift has definitely accelerated under Cisco's new-look leadership.

"I have not been in this team before. I believe Chuck, Gerri [Elliott] and Maria [Martinez] made some fundamental changes which are key for being part of this transformation. Maria has no Cisco legacy, she worked for a long time in the industry, so she understands the customer experience. To a high extent, she was pushing us in this direction, which is easier when you're new, which was also my advantage," he said.

"And look at the team - it is a diverse team. You have people from EMEA, from the UK, from the Netherlands, from Japan and people with different histories, legacies and strengths.

"This is the diversity we need. We need people who understand the core business, then the new parts of the business - coming from different sides. This is diversity and in a complex world, you need diversity."