Cisco and Multiverse join forces to accelerate tech talent in Greater Manchester

The tech giant, which announced plans in January to cut almost 700 US jobs, is helping upskill its channel partners with a new training programme

Cisco today announced its training partnership with tech start-up Multiverse to fund the skills development of its channel partners in the Greater Manchester area.

The Tech Talent Accelerator programme will focus on business-critical skills in digital transformation and data analytics, helping to accelerate digital careers in the region.

Some 36 employees from Cisco channel partners including CAE, CDW, Cisilion, Claranet, Insight and Natilik participated in the pilot programme which helped to shape what will be available to future students.

The training courses available through Multiverse for Cisco's partners include Advanced Data Fellowships for data science specialists; Data Fellowships for data champions; Data Literacy for business teams; and wider Business Transformation learning.

"As part of Cisco's commitment to Greater Manchester One, our collaboration with Multiverse enables us to nurture the best talent in our partner ecosystem," said Cisco UK & Ireland CEO, David Meads.

"The programme will provide important funded development opportunities in what is already one of the most talented IT ecosystems in the world.

"The only way we'll close the digital skills gap - and truly embrace the opportunity digital presents - is if we look across the whole spectrum, from education to retraining."

CRN spoke with Yasmin Chowdhary, apprenticeship programme lead at Cisco UK&I to find out more about the programme, why it was launched and what its goal are.

What is the programme all about?

"For partners in our ecosystem to benefit from Cisco's levy, but most importantly to be able to have a very intimate, talent-driven conversation between us and Multiverse to identify what critical digital skills they need in their business," Chowdhary said.

"This isn't just around hiring new employees but actually looking at their existing workforce and where critical digital gaps are and where skills are needed."

She added: "And through those conversations identifying the right apprenticeship programme, so the roles these people are doing in those organisations are really impactful and lead the company and the partners to the transformation they're trying to get to which, interestingly, has been predominantly around data. "

What is the overall aim of the programme?

"In the pilot of this programme we uncovered over 15 different roles that are super varied from a bid manager to a chief finance officer, for example, and data has been the common theme between them," she continued.

"When we surveyed the pilot group they all shared that on average they're spending at least 4.5 hours, half a day a week solely looking and working with data.

"That time doesn't feel effective. What we want to try and do is improve the way they're interacting, understanding, creating data stories to drive forward customer engagement and insights."

What are the benefits of the Tech Talent Accelerator programme?

"The programmes are fully funded by Cisco. One partner employee who is in a bids team and is five months in said the benefits to her role have been immediate.

"Already she can start to see the missing data that she requires to make bids so much stronger when you are trying to explain value to a customer around the tech and the data it will give them and the decisions they can lead to."

Why did Cisco launch the programme?

"The Cisco way is always to do things with purpose and meaning.

"When we were looking at options with Multiverse we liked the ability to have intimate conversations with our partners that essentially volunteer to be a part of this programme because they want to benefit from the fully funded but also want to benefit from programmes that are going to help drive those skills.

"The thing that really drove this was change and wanting to help our partners. We are forever talking to our partners about talent.

"Internally in Cisco we've been running apprenticeships for 12 years and there's so much we've learnt in that process and what we wanted to do was model what we do internally, externally to help our partners.

"This is about helping fund their own internal development."

Targets for the Multiverse programme

"We're hoping with the phase that we want to launch and develop skills in Greater Manchester, with the levy we're able to donate we're hoping to at least secure 80 placements, 80 partner employees this year."

How does this training programme affect the channel?

"There is a buy vs build skills challenge/ balance channel partners need to maintain.

"Some channel partners are finding that being time poor is a challenge and having to attract, recruit, train and develop, and then post into a role.

"Both have their merit but there's a balance between that buy vs build. This is appealing because it takes away that time poor challenge."