Managing the relationship and ensuring teams within your Cisco partner business is often time-consuming, costly and difficult. Vortex 6 offers tools that help partners to better align with the vendors, especially Cisco. In total, there are 38,638 Cisco partners worldwide, and maintaining competitiveness isn’t easy.
Vortex 6 has now announced two new tools to add it its portfolio: the V6 Cisco Director and the V6 Cisco 360 Advisory. The Cisco Director contains several existing tools as well as the new Cisco Advisory. These are designed to help organisations maximise the benefits of partnering with Cisco and get them closer to the technology giant.
Overall, the new products and services aim to deliver the following:
- Improved competitiveness
- Business continuity
- Better alignment with Cisco programs
- Greater management awareness
- More control and visibility
In turn, these benefits help organisations to gain benefits, including:
- Unlock revenue opportunities
- Secure incentives
- Boost program compliance
Peter Olive, CEO of Vortex 6, said, “We are driven by a passion for helping our customers fully realize the value of their relationship with Cisco. V6 Cisco Director and V6 Cisco 360 Advisory provide Cisco partners with new opportunities, better alignment, and more control and visibility for all stakeholders. Most importantly, it delivers the opportunity to maximize profitability and make a significant difference to the bottom line.”
Cisco Director Suite
The Cisco Director suite consists of four components that enable Cisco partners to automate and optimise their partner program engagements and access to awards.
V6 BOM Analyser
The BOM Analyser enables partners to accurately identify the true gross margin of every deal. It addresses the challenge that many organisations face when issuing quotations. The BOM Analyser identifies the margin on resale products. It also identifies which Value Incentive Program is applicable and how the Cisco Services Partner Program will impact the deal. It will also provide information relating to the Life Cycle Incentive opportunities and any Professional Services margin. With more accurate information to hand, it helps partners win competitive bids, and Cisco have more chance when competitor products are involved.
V6 Cisco Incentive
Cisco has long offered valuable incentives and rebates to encourage partners to shift selling to where Cisco’s current focus is. V6 Cisco Incentive helps partners to understand what current incentives are available and how they can take advantage.
Partners are able to look at their accrued rebates, the status of minimum bookings, rebates accrued by clients, financial forecasting and upcoming renewals. The tool helps partners win new business and improve retention with existing clients.
V6 Cisco Compliance
The V6 Cisco compliance tool helps Cisco partners to fully manage compliance from a single dashboard. Users can obtain full visibility of their current position and also upcoming changes that might impact their compliance status. It offers a planning tool to enable partners to approach the compliance challenge with different strategies. The platform also includes details of the training requirements and costs for every certification. The costs of the chosen strategy can then be used for budgeting purposes.
What isn’t clear is whether this tool offers any what-if scenario planning at all. However, it aims to ensure that partners no longer require multiple spreadsheets to manage their compliance requirements. Ultimately, V6 Cisco Compliance reduces cost and risk. It also means that administrators are presented with complex information on a platter without needing to have the expert knowledge to build compliance spreadsheets that were once required. AS certifications are updated V6 Cisco Compliance changes to reflect the new reality.
A spokesperson from Telefonica noted, “The product provides us with a complete view of our employee’s Cisco certification data across the entire company, it has the functionalities and reporting capabilities we need to meet the requirements of the Cisco Gold Partner Program.”
V6 Cisco 360 Advisory
We have pulled together all of our expert advisory services into V6 Cisco 360 Advisory. It covers advice on every aspect of a partner’s relationship with Cisco, from strategic alignment to operational efficiency, specialization advice, incentive forecasting, and audit preparation.
Included within the V6 Cisco Advisory is the V6 LCI Advisory (Life Cycle Incentives) which offers detailed guidance to unlock rebates across all LCI opportunities. This service helps partners attain strategic alignment with Cisco’s objective. It offers:
- Cisco partner status achievement
- Proactive Subscription Management
- Audit Preparation
- Incentive Forecasting
- Multi-Vendor Certification Tracking
- LCI Rebate Unlocking Guidance
- Lifecycle Process Optimisation
Vortex 6 also offers a free V6 Health Check, which will help Cisco partners identify where the Vortex 6 services will help. Partners can also see Vortex 6 at Cisco Live, which is being held in Las Vegas from June 2nd – 6th.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
Working with any large technology organisation can be difficult. It takes resources that know what they are doing, and often, these resources are better serving customers and improving revenue. Vortex 6 fills a gap that many partners need to free up those resources. With a mix of automation and knowledge, these solutions can increase the productivity, profitability and efficiency of partner organisations.
The new solutions offer greater support for partners struggling to keep up with the ever-changing partner compliance and financial rules. What is missing from this announcement are some of the details about the new solutions, though interested partners can, of course contact Vortex 6 direct.
