Cisco Ups The Ante on Channel Certification Program

"We have increased customer satisfaction in every area across the company," says Surinder Brar, who is senior director of marketing for worldwide channels for Cisco. "Partners must meet a minimum score to renew their certifications."

In other Cisco channel developments,Tushar Kothari has been promoted to vice president of new business ventures, a newly created business unit within Cisco focusing on the creation of products for the SMB and commercial market segments. He now reports to Charlie Giancarlo, senior vice president and general manager of switching voice and carrier systems. Kothari's previous responsibilities have been split between Brar and Carolyn Crandall, who will handle U.S. distribution strategy.

Cisco has been using questionnaires developed by an independent polling organization for years for its own internal satisfaction scoring process, a score that is critically noted by management since "this metric is part of our compensation package and bonus are computed on whether we meet our satisfaction goals," according to Brar.

"This year our current goal is to average at least a 4.5 out of a possible 5.0 companywide," says Brar. "But now our partners have access to this application and data for their own customers."

"It's about time," says Duane Tursi, cofounder and president of Netarx, developer of IP telephony management solutions and certified in both IP telephony and remote networks operations advanced technology. "We are at 4.63 out of 5 today in terms of satisfaction scores. This is something that we incent our technicians as well, and of course we have found that overall satisfaction among our customers has improved as a result."

Brar was one of the architects of the latest channel program that began about a year ago.

"We wanted to move our channel partners to a model based on value-added products and away from earlier models based on pure volume," says Brar.

His program eliminated total product volume measurements and replaced these with a focus on specific areas, called specializations. There are now a total of ten different specialization areas, including two new ones focusing on services (IP telephony services and VPN security services).

"We retire and introduce new specializations all the time," Brar says. "We do this when we believe we have enough partners in that particular market or when a market is slowing down. For example, our SNA IP specialization was retired last year."

These specializations have proven to be a mixed bag with Cisco's partners. Of course, the company is for the most part very happy with them and with the interest in them from partners.

"We have been pleasantly surprised," says Brar. "Last April there were about 400 partners with various specializations. Today there are 10 times that amount and the number continues to grow."

However, some resellers aren't completely happy with the drain on their resources to obtain the various specializations: they do take their personnel away from the day's business and some of the tests need further refinement. Company representatives spoke about how the IP telephony exams were too easy and had produced a glut of partners who qualified for this specialization. Tursi agrees that the standards need to be brought up.

"Especially with IP telephony, it is the first time there is a logo facing the end user," he says. "Previously, Cisco used to be just in the wiring closet. Now we have a real-time quality of service application, it is imperative that Cisco has partners that know what they are doing."