Las Vegas, Nevada, April 16, 2003 - Highlighting its commitment to its channel, Cisco Systems, Inc, the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, today announced the extension of its distribution strategy to Eastern Europe Middle East and Africa (E-EMEA) and the integration of the online strategies of Cisco and its Distribution Partners in EMEA via E-Extend an ecommerce solutions and NextGen a xml application.
Reducing cost of inventory for distributors in EMEA
Cisco will extend its distribution strategy into Eastern EMEA, awarding either Cisco Distribution Partner (CDP) or Cisco Authorised Distributor (CAD) status initially to distributors in the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Israel, Romania, Russia, Turkey, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Morocco. CDPs will have a direct purchasing relationship with Cisco and CADs will continue to have a direct relationship with Cisco, but will now procure Cisco products from a CDP (as well as other Cisco Authorized Channels). During the transition period to CDP or CAD in E-EMEA, Cisco will allow distributors to purchase directly from Cisco and also second source products from CDPs for a period of three months under the same conditions.
"This new distribution strategy will enable us to be agile and responsive at the same time, allowing us to fully focus and develop our reseller community," said Tudor Iliescu, General Manager of TREND IMPORT EXPORT - Romania, the first CAD to be announced in E-EMEA.
The extension of Cisco's distribution strategy into E-EMEA is as a result of the successful introduction of this model in Western Europe in October 2001. In Western Europe there are currently five Cisco Distribution Partners and six Cisco Authorised Distributors that have enabled distributors in EMEA to maximise the efficiency of their business, increasing the product availability to end-users whilst reducing the cost of doing business from both Cisco and its distribution partners.
"Cisco has been at the leading edge with its distribution strategy, enabling us to lower our costs and optimize the efficiency and productivity in the supply chain. Cisco's distribution strategy plays to our strength - at Tech Data we provide a single stocking point for our European business with single point of ordering, shipment, warehousing, inventory and claims management and payment," said Graeme Watt, President of European Operations Tech Data Europe.
Integration of Cisco and its Distribution Partners online strategies in EMEA
Cisco is integrating its online B2B strategy with its distribution partners in EMEA, by providing a tailor made suite of Cisco-content to its distributor's front and back-end e-commerce systems. The integration of the distributor's back-end systems via the XML application NextGen, has streamlined processes that were previously manual such as order status, pricing and order submitting of Cisco products. The removal of the manual intervention between Cisco and our distributor's processes provides improved quality of configured orders.
When a CDP requests the content of an entire Cisco.com e-commerce application, Cisco uses E-Extend, a front-end e-commerce solution that enables Cisco content to be extended by distributing interactive web applications through our distribution partner websites improving the online research buying process for resellers throughout EMEA. The E-Extend solution benefits our distributors by enabling lower cost of sales, increasing online effectiveness, providing added value to their resellers whilst all the time maintaining customer ownership. Our resellers benefit in that they now have a streamlined process that enables them to easily access all relevant tools when and where they need them.
