AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, July 19, 2004 - As part of its commitment to the Small and Medium-sized Business (SMB) market throughout Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Cisco Systems, Inc., today announced the launch of several new initiatives, including SMB Class solutions, SMB Select Partner program, new SMB-focused sales team and new SMB market intelligence tools.
The solutions and initiatives were designed in response to an extensive phase of regional research and development focusing on understanding and covering the diverse SMB market, defined within the EMEA region as companies with 20-249 employees.
SMB Class solutions have been developed to support the Cisco partner community when communicating with their SMB customers, with tailored solution guides, network blue prints and sales presentations. These solutions provide proven technology, implementation simplicity and comprehensive services that help enable SMB's to build secure, reliable and flexible networks which scale easily and cost-effectively as their companies grow.
"Cisco is committed to helping EMEA's small and medium-sized businesses become more productive, more efficient, and more secure by enabling them to maximize the return on their investment in information technology," said Edzard Overbeek, vice president, Commercial, Channels and Consumer, EMEA, Cisco Systems. "In line with the SMB Class solutions initiative, Cisco will introduce new SMB-focused products over the next 12 months. We will combine these with a standardized and simplified user interface on all SMB-related products, giving our customers a consistent and integrated experience."
SMB Select Partner is a new designation that recognizes and rewards Cisco channel partners who have a focused business practice selling into the SMB market. The designation demonstrates to customers that the SMB Select Partner understands and supports networking solutions for small and medium-sized customers.
"We have spent the last year gathering extensive market intelligence across European countries to ensure we better understand our SMB customers and the market opportunity in depth," said Marius Schenderling, SMB Operations Manager, EMEA, Cisco Systems, Inc. "Using all our previous experience in technology, and the results of this research, we have developed SMB Select. The program will grow Cisco solutions to the small and medium business, optimizing our channel geographical and technical coverage by focusing on resellers who actively work with, and understand the needs of SMB businesses."
"Cisco is proactively addressing an enormous opportunity with SMB Select as the networking commercial market in EMEA is approximately $3.7 billion," said Keith Humphreys, managing consultant, EuroLAN Research. "Cisco is doing this by the creation and recruitment of what's known as proximity resellers - dealers who are geographically constrained by factors such as the Yellow Pages region, or the area in which they can effectively service using their limited vehicle fleet. By using zip codes to define the territory, Cisco has given the channel combined with Cisco sales teams an area to prospect, which maps to his/her current work patterns."
One of the critical success factors to the SMB Select program is the development of a new regional sales role, the Territory Market Manager (TMM) responsible for creating customer intimacy at a regional level by managing non-named account opportunities within a defined local territory. The TMM will work with any reseller including the SMB Select Partners in his/her territory to develop and execute marketing plans, manage sales opportunities, follow up leads and close business to achieve his/her sales target.
Since Cisco first announced its entry into the Consumer, SoHo, Small, Medium and Mid-Sized business markets with the creation of its Commercial organization at the end of 2001, and acquisition of Linksys in the summer of 2003, the company has realigned its business and internal systems, in order to scale the organization to the size of the Commercial opportunity. To assist the EMEA Commercial team, Cisco is currently delivering a suite of sales and marketing intelligence tools, to ensure an integrated and consistent Customer Relationship Management (CRM) & Partner Relationship Management (PRM) approach but with a true regional view. This will provide Cisco with a unique data driven go to market, that results in identifiable and actionable sales opportunities, plus a closer understanding and relationship with the SMB focused partners and SMB customers.
To further assist Cisco channel partners, resellers can utilize SMB Class solutions and SMB Select tools via the recently launched Cisco SMB partner portal called SMB Engage- www.cisco.com/go/smbengage.
The SMB Select Partner is a global designation but is customized by theatre. The program will be rolled out across Europe before the end of FY05. SMB Class and SMB Engage are available now in most countries across Europe.
