Cisco And Tech Data Team On CapacityBuilder Program

The program incorporates three services: PerformanceBuilder, ProductivityBuilder and TalentBuilder, and all three are designed to take the burden of repetitive integration and back-office work off of solution providers by offering the services through Tech Data.

"The single most critical issue facing Cisco partners today is the acquisition, development and productive use of technical talent in their organizations," said Chuck Robbins, segment vice president, U.S. and Canada Channels for Cisco.

Cisco knew it wanted to help its partners, and was impressed with what Tech Data had to offer, Robbins said.

"The whole notion of increasing the talent available to our partners by fundamentally increasing their efficiency and productivity was something we hadn't really looked at," Robbins said.

The two developed CapacityBuilder to address the needs of Cisco partners while leveraging the services capabilities available through Tech Data's existing programs like TDEducation, the Clearwater, Fla.-based distributor's training and support services team, and its MyOrderTracker service which allows customers to track orders placed through Tech Data.

The PerformanceBuilder program educates solution providers on the configuration services the distributor offers as Cisco Advanced Integration Services. Tech Data can configure and ship hardware to end users under VARs' private labels.

ProductivityBuilder brings Tech Data's MyOrderTracker and other Web-based services to Cisco partners, allowing them to proactively notify customers on the status of orders.

TalentBuilder helps resellers learn bout Cisco's channel programs through TDEducation.

"In my mind this is really a win-win where the Cisco partners get to use the effectiveness, efficiency and scalability of a $12 billion company in the U.S. market and free their resources up and expand their businesses," said Chuck Bartlett, vice president, networking product marketing, Tech Data. "They're definitely capabilities we've had. They are being tailored to solving a particular issue that both Cisco and we see in the market."

Steve Robb, vice president and general manager of LaSalle Solutions, Rosemont, Ill., said Tech Data's CapacityBuilder program has allowed him to devote his system engineers to do higher-end integration and installation work and win large business deals.

When a large beverage company came to LaSalle Solutions needing to upgrade Cisco switches at 250 sites within 60 days, the solution provider used Tech Data's services to configure them and have them shipped to the various sites saving both valuable integration hours and shipping fees.

"When you don't have a guy that's a higher level engineer doing baseline configurations and you can focus him in on being in front of the customer and on doing high-level implementations, not only does it keep you more productive you can charge the high dollar figures [for his time]," said Robb. "It keeps your engineers engaged in things that are relevant to them -- things that make them excited about what they're doing for a living."