Interview: Cisco MD intent to boost channel sales

Les Williamson, A/NZ vice president of Cisco Systems has vowed to increase the volume of Cisco sales sold through its partner channel from 65 percent to over the 90 percent mark.

Outlining his FY10 priorities with CRN, Williamson said that while Cisco is globally a "partner-enabled" company, the Australia and New Zealand region continues to take a disproportionate amount of deals direct.

"Globally, about 80 to 82 percent of our revenue is partner-enabled," he said. "Now I'm a bit below that, probably about 65-70 percent in Australia/New Zealand. What I'm saying is, I need to ratchet that up, I need to rely more on my partners and become more relevant to my partners."

Williamson said that in the mid-market and small business market in particular, the "propensity was for Cisco to get too high touch with customers [and] try and handle every single deal."

He said that the economic crisis "while it has not hit the Australian economy so hard," has provided a great opportunity for Cisco to get aim for a "90 percent enablement model."

The executive said he intends to "raise" the relevance of partners", which has an associated productivity gain for Cisco.

"We're not there yet, but we'll deliver on in FY10," he said.

Building a 'business relevant" channel

Williamson's strategy is to drive more product sales through Cisco's traditional 'velocity' (high volume sales) and 'value' (systems integrator) channels, while simultaneously forming a new channel around organisations that provide business advice.

These 'next generation partners' include business consultants such as Accenture and McKinsey, as well as other vendors with boardroom relationships such as Oracle, SAP, VMware and EMC.

Globally, Cisco is looking to these "business process integrators" to sell Cisco's virtualisation and collaboration technologies at board level.

"We've seen the opening for a far more business relevant discussion," Williamson said. "It's around business process - transformation, change or innovation."

Accenture, for example, have created a Cisco business unit, while Cisco has created an Accenture business unit within its own ranks.

"Accenture bring that business process engagement and knowledge," Williamson said. "Their typical way to start a conversation with a customer is vastly different to ours - we are coming from the IT space, moving into the business process space. That's Accenture's sweet spot, they'll go to a board or a business owner and say, we can take 20 percent of costs out of your business by doing A, B, C and D."

Williamson said companies like Accenture are starting to realise that "the network and the platform is becoming far more relevant to enable their business proposition."

How do you feel about Cisco's move to boost its 'business process' channel with the likes of Accenture? Is it a threat to systems integrators or a positive move to help raise awareness of the Cisco Systems brand at board level? Comment below or read on to Part II of the interview.