April 4, 2005

by Charles Waltner, News@Cisco

Smaller is proving better for Cisco Systems and its channel partners.

Over the last year, Cisco has introduced an array of products, software, services and financing specifically designed to help channel partners market to and support the networking needs of small and midsized business customers. The initiative is helping Cisco's channel partners reach a vast market of one million businesses in the United States and up to 10 million businesses worldwide.

Smaller businesses and organization want the benefits that advanced networking equipment can give them, but they often lack the expertise and resources to successfully implement today's more complex technologies. Cisco's channel partners are a great source for helping customers do just that, but these organizations need tools and services that make their marketing, sales and support jobs as efficient and effective as possible.

"One size certainly doesn't fit all when it comes to the wide-range of business customers we need to address these days," says Michael French, chief executive officer of Network Architechs, a Cisco channel partner in Albuquerque, N.M., with a focus on smaller regional businesses.

Cisco's efforts are most recently highlighted in the introduction of the Cisco SMB Support Assistant. Support Assistant is the first technical support service Cisco has specifically developed for the SMB (small and midsized business) market and combines live assistance, e-tools for self-service setup and troubleshooting, next-day parts replacement, and diagnostic support for software patching and upgrades. Cisco designed SMB Support Assistant to solve networking problems in the shortest time possible to minimize any impact on smaller business operations. Support Assistant costs roughly 45 percent less than SMARTnet, Cisco's highly successful flagship support service.

"Over the last 18 months we have identified a number of areas where Cisco SMARTnet either provided more support than need by small and midsized businesses or provided tools that were inappropriate to their challenges and resources," says Wim Elfrink, senior vice president of Cisco's Customer Advocacy group. "We built Cisco SMB Support Assistant from the ground up with these issues in mind."

SMB Support Assistant provides channel partners a way to recruit new customers while increasing customer satisfaction with their current customers.

"Our pilot tests of Support Assistant have show that the likelihood of customers buying additional products with a basic purchase goes up three-fold when the channel partners offer service support with the product sale," Elfrink says. "It's all part of our approach to total life cycle customer support."

French from Network Architechs says support services are the best way to retain customers and make follow up sales. "It's the way we can stay in front of our customers and develop a relationship with them rather than simply undergo a one-time transaction," French says.

To further aid channel partners in the support of smaller businesses, Cisco also recently released version 2.0 of Cisco Network Assistant. Network Assistant, a GUI-based management tool, simplifies the complicated and repetitive configuration and troubleshooting of switches, routers and wireless access points. Version 2.0 adds new ease-of-use features such as drag-and-drop software upgrade tools and expanded support for Cisco SMB-Class devices.

Cisco, however, has been rolling out much more than support tools for helping channel partners reach small and midsized businesses. In July last year Cisco introduced SMB Select Partner, a program which helps Cisco more easily identify, support and reward channel partners that are focused on selling to small and midsized businesses. The SMB Select Partner program is one of the key components to Cisco's overall SMB-Class Initiative.

Cisco has also been making good on its promise to create at least 30 new products specifically designed for small and midsized organizations. Last year Cisco rolled out a new line of Integrated Services Routers (ISRs) that manage the networking connections of small and midsize businesses as well as branch offices. They are relatively inexpensive and much easier to manage than typical "access" routers while providing a whole host of new services for integrated security and IP communications capabilities. In September last year, Cisco also introduced a suite of Cisco Catalyst switching products and services specifically designed and priced for smaller organization, including new entry-level extensions to the Cisco Catalyst 4500 Series of modular switches.

French says the importance of such new products cannot be understated. "We've always had to retrofit hardware for our smaller business customers because of Cisco's traditional focus on networking gear for major corporations," French says. "But smaller businesses have very specific needs that are much different than large corporations. By creating hardware crafted to meet the requirements of smaller businesses, the task of a channel partner becomes much easier."

Cisco also announced recently that its subsidiary, Cisco Systems Capital, will add $500 million to its global partner financing programs, as well as launch a new leasing program, called Easy Lease. The $500 million short-term growth capital will be used to expand the credit limits of qualified Cisco channel partners, as well as extend the terms of third-party credit programs. Easy Lease provides a highly automated, Web-enabled suite of tools and resources for expediting the approval of leases for customers.

Bob Golden, director of operations for Cisco channel partner, Sarcom in Columbus, Ohio, says traditional financing companies do not know how to capitalize services, making it difficult for his company to get the kind of terms it needs for business loans. But it is easy for Sarcom to turn to Cisco for an array of loans and financing that helps spread out the up-front costs of equipment purchase, staff training and other expenses. Now channel partners and their customer will get even more help to transition to the new era of networking.

ADX Technologies in Coral Gables, Fl., typifies the kind of channel partner Cisco is trying to help with its SMB-Class Initiative. Alex Obeso, ADX Technologies' chief executive officer, says Cisco's support has been invaluable as his 11-person company refocuses on smaller regional businesses.

"Advanced technology deployments are more complicated and take more time than plain vanilla data networks," Obeso says. "But Cisco has backed us with training and financing so we can help our regional business customers the right way by making the necessary investments. And we can see it paying off as we tap into a market that is getting better and better for us."

Charles Waltner is a freelance journalist in Oakland, Calif.