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Cisco Unveils Service Contract Management Solution and Consulting Process for Channel Partners
Global Offerings to Help Channel Partners Build and Profitably Grow Their Services Practices
| Source: Cisco Systems, Inc.
SAN JOSE, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- March 26, 2007 -- Cisco® (NASDAQ : CSCO ) today introduced two
global offerings to help channel partners simplify the process of selling
and delivering services, enhance their services portfolios, and improve
customer satisfaction and loyalty. Cisco Service Contract Center is a
Web-based solution intended to simplify the way a channel partner manages
and sells services, while Cisco E-Consulting for Partners is an analytical,
automated system that provides customized recommendations and activities to
address gaps in a channel partner's services practice.
"Selling and delivering services can mean a variety of things, from
providing or reselling technical support to providing a customer with
network design assistance. We understand the complexity around building
out a profitable services practice," said Karl Meulema, vice president,
marketing and channels for Cisco services. "We have been listening to our
channel partners, and they tell us that process simplification and help
with business assessments and recommendations are two specific areas where
Cisco could really help. We are always striving to help our channel
partners differentiate themselves in the market and deliver a profitable
and sustainable service to our mutual customers."
Cisco Service Contract Center
"The level of detail provided by the new Cisco Service Contract Center is
going to save us a month's work," said Lynne Daly, CSSP renewals/program
administrator of Dimension Data. "Now we can focus our attention on
selling and servicing our customers instead of waiting for reports,
searching for information, reconciling prices, re-entering quotes and
solving problems."
Cisco Service Contract Center is a simple and easy-to-use solution for
channel partners who want to identify and track renewal opportunities,
quote and order service offerings, and manage service contracts on an
ongoing basis. Designed to improve efficiency and enable business growth
through the simplification of end-to-end service delivery, the Cisco
Service Contract Center solution becomes available for 1-Tier Channel
Partners starting on March 27, 2007. For more details, please visit:
www.cisco.com/go/cscc.
Cisco E-Consulting for Partners
"As a long-standing Cisco channel partner, we are excited by Cisco's
commitment to channel partner success with Cisco E-Consulting for
Partners," said Paul Lopez, general manager of marketing and services for
NEC Unified Solutions. "We look forward to learning about these additional
capabilities and hearing how our business benchmarks with other
industry-leading practices, while taking advantage of the Cisco
recommendations and activities. These new services complement our existing
offerings and will increase our customer service levels."
Cisco E-Consulting for Partners is an automated process that measures and
assesses a channel partner's sales and delivery capabilities against its
industry peers and leading practices and then provides customized
recommendations and suggested activities to address any gaps. Features
include the "Partner Dashboard," which provides a quick summary of a
partner's profile and key performance metrics in a consistent, easy-to-read
format. "Findings and Recommendations" prioritize key findings based on a
partner's assessment and provides customized recommendations for each of
the identified areas of opportunity. The "Improvement Tracking" section
provides a summary of a partner's key improvement areas so that it can
track its progress over time. Cisco E-Consulting for Partners becomes
available to channel partners in May 2007.
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