Cisco Australia would look to partner with its resellers to pursue market opportunities that couldn't be carried out by its own workforce, an executive has said.
Speaking at Cisco's Networkers conference on Tuesday, Ross Fowler, Cisco's MD for Australia and New Zealand, said that historically the vendor had had a very strong sales force, creating demand, with resellers providing the fulfilment role. “I think they realise that they need to move beyond just fulfilling,” he said.
He told iTnews that there was a global drive in the company to reduce inefficiencies.
At a recent global summit Cisco launched an Opportunity Incentive Program for its partners which includes a rebate being given to partners that brought in opportunities which Cisco hadn't identified, Fowler said. It was part of a drive by the networking vendor to encourage its resellers to “hunt” for opportunities in the marketplace.
Fowler said that the pilot for this program in Asia-Pacific would be run in Australia, and it planned to launch this in the first quarter of the next fiscal year, probably during August 2004.
In addition, Fowler said there were also plans to launch a marketing campaign based on Cisco's self-defending network strategy within the current quarter. This would help its partners reposition their value proposition when they were talking to CIOs, he said. “Talking about solutions to their [the CIO's] security concerns, with the reseller delivering better value to the customer.”
Fowler said there were no plans for layoffs at Cisco here in the drive to reduce inefficiencies, but that he would need to scale the business without enormously increasing headcount.
Vivienne Fisher travelled to Networkers 2004 courtesy of Cisco Systems.
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