Cisco's new UK&I channel boss: 'Now's the time to transform how we go to market with our partners'

Dominic Pierce opens up on first few weeks on the job and Cisco’s ‘mindboggling’ partner ecosystem in the UK and Ireland

Cisco's newly appointed channel boss says that now is the time for Cisco and its thousands of UK partners to transform how they go to market as he highlights lifecycle services and renewals as a key focus for the vendor.

Dominic Pierce took over as MD of Cisco's UK and Ireland partner organisation last month, replacing Angela Whitty who left to join Cisco MSP Ampito at the beginning of the year.

Pierce has more than 15 years of experience at Cisco and was previously the vendor's UK enterprise operations director.

Speaking to CRN, the new channel boss said that, although he had always worked with Cisco's partners in previous roles, he had never grasped the sheer scale of its channel until he took the new role.

"We have something like 4,000 partners in the UK and Ireland - it's mindboggling. And we have 20,000-odd professionals across those organisations that can go and talk about Cisco every day. The scale that partners bring is enormous," he said.

Pierce said that he believes the time is now for Cisco and its 4,000-strong UK&I partners to make a "fundamental shift" and transform how they go to market, putting a larger emphasis on lifecycle services as the vendor moves more into software and subscription models.

"We've dealt with our partners in a similar way for many, many years. Now we need to really have a think about making sure our partners have the ability to bring the right offers to our joint customers in the right way.

"[We need to] make sure that our customers can squeeze all the value out of the investments they're making.

"They're no longer investing in point-in-time hardware purchases; they're investing in software and subscriptions, which should be enabling and helping their business thrive and deliver whatever outcomes they're trying to achieve. We've got to be there with them doing the work to make sure that technology is adopted, expanded and utilised."

Cisco introduced new incentives to encourage partners to drive software activation and adoption during its 2019 Partner Summit in Las Vegas as part of its so-called "Customer Experience" strategy.

Pierce said that partner certifications around Cisco's lifecycle-based services programmes have "accelerated massively" over the last few years, claiming that its UK business is "in a good shape".

"I've been meeting executives from the partner community over the last few weeks, and all of them get this, and they all understand philosophically why this is important for them, for us, and for our mutual customers," Pierce said.

"Our programmes are evolving and we're incentivising partners to move in that direction. It's a really significant opportunity for the partners who get it right to not only win business but retain that business and have that sticky, sustainable, differentiated relationship with customers off the back of it."

Pierce said he has spent the last five weeks getting to know partners to understand how they are profitable and how they do sustainable long-term business with Cisco.

The new channel boss said he has some ideas about how to build on Cisco's partner base, but added that he was cautious of "leaping to conclusions".

Pierce hinted that continuing the drive lifecycle services, renewals and customer success in the UK channel is also a priority, adding that more partner-to-partner collaboration could also be a growth opportunity.

"There's a lot of loyalty to Cisco, but what I want to do is re-own that right to be their most trusted vendor partner. I think that's incredibly important," he said.