Cisco Unleashes ROI Calculator For Partners

Cisco's converged network investment calculator is designed to calculate an end customer's return on investment (ROI) for an IP telephony solution by taking that customer's individual circumstances into account, said Surinder Brar, senior director of marketing for Cisco Worldwide Channels.

The Web-based tool is available only to Cisco's IP telephony specialized partners. Cisco plans to release additional ROI calculators centered on its other technology specializations in the future, Brar added.

Robert Keblusek, vice president of business development for Cisco partner Sentinel Technologies, Downers Grove, Ill., said his company has been using the ROI calculator as part of a pilot program. "It's a really compelling tool," he said. "We are selling more based on these ROI analyses than ever."

The ROI analyses can become very complicated, but they are a necessary part of selling IP telephony solutions, Keblusek said. "Our customers are requiring that we do an ROI analysis on every proposal," he said.

The analyses must take many factors into account, such as whether a customer has a call center or an existing lease on a legacy PBX, he said. "Each customer has a very individual situation, and the calculator helps sort that out," Keblusek said.

Cisco spent the past eight months perfecting the calculator with its own sales team, Brar said. During that time, the vendor's direct-sales staff used the calculator with more than 1,000 customers, he said.

"We're trying to share best practices that we think our partners can use to provide a compelling ROI case," Brar said. "In today's economy, a compelling financial case is essential."

Because the tool calculates ROI based on an individual customer's situation, it can be applied to either large-scale enterprise projects or SMB implementations, Brar added.

Cisco Channels also has created two e-learning courses to help partners learn about ROI analyses and how to use the calculator, Brar said.