Cisco Advances Plan To Bring Partner Relations Up A Notch

In October, the networking hardware vendor plans to launch a partner relationship management tool on its partner Web portal that will measure partner satisfaction with Cisco and provide a mechanism to address partner feedback, said Kevin MacRitchie, vice president of Cisco Worldwide channels operations.

Assessing partner satisfaction is a natural extension of Cisco's focus on customer satisfaction, MacRitchie said. "By having a system to quickly and efficiently resolve any issues our partners may have, we can focus on how we can jointly serve our customers best," he said.

Bob Norton, vice president of Select, a Westwood, Mass.-based Cisco solution provider, called the tool an "outstanding" idea. "In today's economic environment, it's treacherous out here. We are still a loyal, Cisco-only partner, but we do have issues. This looks like an ideal solution to address them," Norton said.

Both Cisco and its partners will benefit if the vendor gives partner feedback the same attention it gives to customer satisfaction, said Doug Seaman, director of converged technologies at Logical Networks, a Bloomfield Hills, Mich.-based solution provider.

"A lot of Cisco partners that are out of business or struggling now might still be strong, viable businesses if this happened 12 months ago," Seaman said.

Available through Cisco's Partner Access Online (PAL) portal, the tool gauges a partner's satisfaction with Cisco based on seven criteria: overall satisfaction; presales support; post-sales or TAC support; Cisco Global Services; training and development tools; the Partner E-learning Connection; and Cisco leader-led training, MacRitchie said. After partners take the online survey, the tool generates a satisfaction score for each criterion.

If Cisco scores less than a 4 out of 5 on any of the criteria, the system initiates a process to address the issue, said Don McNally, director of business operations for worldwide channels at Cisco. The partner's channel account manager is then notified and must resolve the issue. The system tracks the resolution process and doesn't close an issue until both the account manager and the partner consider it closed, McNally said.