Ant Newman | CX Content Marketing Lead
In case you missed it, CX is big news at Cisco. It’s been just over a year since Maria Martinez came on board and kickstarted the most dramatic transformation Cisco’s ever been through.
So it’s time to pause and celebrate. The massive organizational changes are complete, and what we’re calling the “CX Blueprint” is fully in place. We have hundreds of new CX roles — like the Customer Success Executive — working in our accounts and with our partners.
We have a new simplified portfolio under development. And the culture of customer obsession that CX embodies is going from strength to strength. CX has even been featured in the Cisco Live US keynote, with our customer Rakuten.
In EMEAR, CX is doing amazing work for customers like Expo2020 in Dubai and BBVA. Sites like Brussels, Krakow and now Lisbon are home to thousands of Cisco CX engineers that are innovating and solving problems every day.
But we’re not resting on our laurels. After the party’s over, we know there’s still a lot of work to do. It’s a big transformation and we know that CX isn’t yet fully embedded into all our activities in marketing, sales and beyond. So for all of us in EMEAR marketing, now is the time to think about what CX means to you.
At the risk of spoilers, the answer is this: it should mean a lot. Because CX is a huge deal for our customers, and our partners, in every country, whether they’re big or small.
81% of IT leaders say they feel under “extreme pressure” to deliver results. CX is here to take that pressure off by making sure customers see business outcomes faster, and it’s our job to tell them all about it.
As an EMEAR Organization, Emma Roffey has sponsored an initiative within EMEAR marketing around CX, focused on four key workstreams:
A tiger team from EMEAR is hard at work on each of these topics, so look out for more news as we make progress.
But what about you? Where do you start? Simple.
We’ve created a playbook that contains everything you need to know. The playbook has been built with EMEAR Marketing in mind, outlining the messaging to use, how we can integrate with our partners, what marketing can and should be doing to drive the importance of CX and finally a go to for all the resources to get you started.
We hope it’ll give you ideas you can start to work on straight away.
CX is really our biggest opportunity as a business. If we do it right, we can grow our customer loyalty and amplify every product opportunity. The time is now!
Rebecca Dicker | Small Business Marketing EMEAR
As we know, Cisco is mirroring the trend of the IT industry towards a recurring revenue business model. Recurring revenue is where company revenue (unlike one-off sales) is predictable and stable at regular intervals, being likely to continue in future. This presents huge opportunities for Cisco Small Business customers and Channel Partners, including:
We know that our partners are already offering these services to customers. In fact, research with 50 of our 2 Tier partners showed that:
So, how do we leverage this huge business opportunity and encourage partners to offer Cisco MSP offers?
From early FY20 we will run marketing activities through our distributors to drive awareness, enable Cisco Partners to become MSPs and drive adoption of Cisco in those MSPs that are selling non-Cisco solutions.
A content kit will be available for our Distis to start conversations and drive awareness with partners. Along with Disti and Partner assets on PMC.
More details to follow as assets become available. However, in the meantime, if you have any questions or would like a more detailed update please reach out to Rebecca Dicker.
Tijana Marjanovic | Marketing Manager, Adriatics & Balkan
Thoughtful marketing approach, experienced digital agency and close marketing and sales collaboration made a difference with our Slovenian partner S&T. Discussing marketing trends and sharing experience from Cisco, partner’s marketing manager started thinking to use customer advocacy for new joint campaign.
Started with research, interviewing customers about their business needs and challenges, purchase journey and habits; she started putting together content. With support from company’s management, colleagues from sales and budget from Cisco, we all committed to drive integrated campaign through whole fiscal year.
Network Buyer omnichannel journey started in Q1, using different channels (mailing, Google ads, SEO optimization, Facebook posts and ads, advertising and articles in local newspapers) and content on web site (customer’s stories, quotes, e-book, infographics), contentiously monitoring and optimizing it. They introduced scoring model for nurturing contacts, but most important was dedicated sales involvement and follow up.
On the top of digital, as a part of campaign, they took active participation in Cisco Connect (Q3) and organized customer event (Q4). Continuing with LinkedIn inmail, remarketing, new ads on Google and social media, local media cooperation, we will continue campaign in FY20.
Results (as of 15th May)
Average time spent on page: 03:08 min
Leads: 46
Hesham Barr | Digital Services Innovation Manager
New name, same upward trend in terms of enabling Cisco Partners to power their marketing campaigns with suitable assets, inclusive free-to-use tools and a gateway to expert third-party tactic execution. The Marketing Velocity Central platform, formerly Partner Marketing Central (PMC) is the focal point of Cisco’s Partner Digital Marketing team’s strategic progression towards helping the Cisco Channel to take marketing campaigns digital-centric. Year-on-year numbers across several Marketing Velocity Central KPIs demonstrate the gathering momentum behind this initiative. For FY19, a 58% increase in active partners using the platform was seen over FY18.
A staggering 16,000 digital assets were downloaded from Marketing Velocity Central over FY19. Beyond this number, it’s worth considering that the potential usage of these resources could benefit many partner team members outside of the registered users who accessed them.
Whilst partners who use the content repository are still the main user group, as this base usage expands, the potential gateway towards more users optioning interactions with the more extensive functionalities, is clear.
With a solid 58% of named partners active on Marketing Velocity Central during FY19, the next step will be to extend the already impressive 20% who used a free tool towards an even higher number in FY20. This adoption of digital tactics will form the conduit for partners to ultimately order FSAs off the portal, as the Cisco Partner Digital Team works towards bringing as many partner-side campaigns under the watchful eye of an approved agency as possible, allowing for careful moderation of performance and quality.
Borja Muzelle | Audience Expert, Network Buyer South & MEA Hala Foustok | Audience Campaign Manager, Network Buyer EMEAR
We are excited to share a new key initiative for FY20 for the Network Buyer journey: The Network insider webinar series. What is the Network Insider Webinar series - A program of monthly webinars: there will be one webinar every month. - Topics will be selected carefully, ensuring alignment with sales and our marketing priorities. - Audiences: Network Buyer and CIO, as content will focus on careabouts and business needs. (Cisco products and solutions will only be briefly shown at the end of each webinars) - Languages: We will start only in English for all theaters. - It will be fully integrated into our journeys.
Promotion of the Insider Webinar Series will include web blades, email blasts, RTB banners and paid and organic social kits, with paid media trafficking for the first webinar beginning in August.
Our goal is to have a minimum of 500 attendees to each webinar. We are creating a report to track the performance, and all theaters will receive the insights.
If you have any question, please reach out to emear-nb-team@cisco.com
Marta Kobosko | EMEAR VDC Program Manager
It’s been a while now when we have launched first VDC-enabled countries! We are glad to announce that as of now there are 20 countries where VDC model was successfully launched.
We are focusing now on building pipeline and bookings. As of now there is $7,5M in the EMEAR active pipeline. VDC finalized 101 bookings of total value $1.9M.
This is a great time to say THANK YOU! Thanks to your help, we have completed to enable all those 20 Partners within the WT and L&P Cisco tools. It is a great example of cross functional teamwork that the VDC brings together across Sales and Marketing in EMEAR region!
As part of our efforts to keep governance to all VDC requests and uploads to the DRT, we would like to remind of the DRT intake request form. Working in such away provides us all with more insight into what you’re planning in country and enable the VDC to better support local initiatives.
Since the launch of the VDC model we have hosted a kick off meeting together with 4 deep dive sessions. We encourage you to listen to the below recordings if you did not have a chance to join the live meetings.
Thanks again for your help this year we would love to ask for your continuous help and support to drive enquiry numbers up and growth in FY20. And since we are already talking about FY20… From day 1 we are starting strong with 36 sales people in the VDC team, including 20 LDRs and 16 BDRs!
Looking for more information on VDC? Please remember to check out VDC Community
Esther Trifich | Regional Partner Marketing Manager EMEAR
As partners look to transform and accelerate their digital marketing practices, we’re making it easier to find the connection points between our flagship marketing services, platforms, and enablement by aligning them under one (naming) umbrella – Cisco Marketing Velocity. We noted that many partners are unaware of the breadth and depth of the marketing enablement, services, and co-marketing we provide. As the importance of marketing and sales working hand-in-hand toward a common goal becomes more pervasive, we identified a need to raise awareness of our offers not only amongst our partners’ marketing teams, but also among the executives and sales teams. This expansion of the Marketing Velocity name will help us communicate more effectively to our partners and raise awareness of the many valuable marketing programs we offer them. The new, expanded Marketing Velocity consists of 4 components:
For those who were unable able to join the 2nd GPM Insights Session on Expanding the Marketing Velocity Brand, you can access the recording here, password VuRJSgN5. This session will give you all a good overview of what's happening with the Marketing Velocity Rebrand.
Check out the Market page on Cisco.com, where you can find information on and links to Velocity Learning, Velocity Central and more.
FY19 saw EMEAR host its first regional Marketing Velocity event in Amsterdam, targeted at marketing decision makers of our top partners. Due to the event’s exclusivity and tailored content, we decided to develop a virtual, on-demand version enabling us to share our learnings and developments in key areas of marketing with all partner marketing contacts across the region.
In a series of curated videos, partners can get insight into Cisco’s Marketing best practices and co-marketing offerings. Opened by a leadership message from Emma Roffey, the series includes sessions on analytics, omni-channel marketing as well as Lifecycle Advantage.
In addition, our partner digital experts walk partners through PMC (now Marketing Velocity Central)
and the lead process, explaining how to set up digital campaigns, leverage social media and take advantage of full-service activities.
This regional virtual training path was communicated to all operational partner marketing contacts at the end of May. It integrates well into the global relaunch of the Marketing Velocity hub (now Marketing Velocity Learning), which delivers information and education in the form of courses, webinars, and exclusive thought leadership content from industry experts.
As always, the hub now also hosts the replay page of the live event, where partners can access most recordings and presentations shared in Amsterdam. Make sure to check out the EMEAR Marketing Velocity virtual page and keep pointing your partners to the content on it as well as the material on Marketing Velocity Learning and the Amsterdam event replay page.
Lara Fawzy | GSSO Marketing Manager
We’re proud to share the first Security Case Study (ISE Solution) for Saudi Arabia. Now published on Cisco.com, showcasing the solution for Saudi Arabia’s King Fahad Specialist Hospital in Dammam.
Look around the hospital, and you’ll see technology everywhere. For example, bedside monitors beam real-time patient health and telemetry data to nursing stations. Spectrometers upload blood test results to our EMR system to be consulted at a later date. Clinicians can view diagnostic images from X-ray machines, CAT scanners, and MRIs on their computers and tablets. And, of course, patients and staff use personal and hospital-owned mobile devices to connect wirelessly to our network. But the issue from an IT perspective is that these medical systems are not pure IT systems.
King Fahad Specialist Hospital in Dammam implemented Identity Services Engine (ISE) in 2016. The change has been remarkable. The first major difference is full network visibility. They can see every service and every device accessing the hospital infrastructure. ISE has enabled full control and visibility with regards to devices connecting to the network and no one can connect without permission. Special thanks to the Account Team (Rayed H Al-Jarba, Mohab Bahij and Ahmad Murad), Marketing Manager, Mohammed Alnahwi and GSSO Marketing Manager Lara Fawzy.
Check out the upshot here
Marked on the global tech calendar on May,16-18, 2019, Viva Technology has become THE unmissable international tradeshow for digital innovation and entrepreneurship.
With more than 124,000 visitors this year, Viva Technology has experienced a steady growth over the past 3 years and has established itself as the largest innovation event in Europe. In fact, it stands out for its ability to bring together the world's top leaders, large corporations, think tanks, investors, entrepreneurs and academics.
This great showcase provides a one-of-a-kind platform where top professionals can network and do business, yet it also invites the general public on Saturdays to preview new products and see how technology will impact the future.
Co-organised by Publicis and Les Echos, Vivatech was inaugurated by French president, Emmanuel Macron, who on the evening prior to the opening day had welcomed French and International technology leaders at the “Tech for Good” Summit.
Bigger and better than ever, Vivatech scores a 24% attendance increase in 2019, comprising 125 countries, 450 speakers, 2,500 journalists, 3,300 investors, 13,000 startups - resulting in 124,000 attendees over 3 days. Watch their teaser video.
Since the debuts of Vivatech in 2016, Cisco kept unveiling unprecedented breakthroughs from a Connected CityTree that reduces air pollution to an intelligent mobility service allowing smart parking in the city. In 2019, we were committed to surprising our audience with even more outstanding experiences that will help us build a better world.
This year at Vivatech, our bet was "The Bridge To Possible". Between hope and possible, there’s a bridge. Cisco reshapes the future of business and the role that we, as citizens of the world, play in making this future possible.
In order to exemplify the meaning of The Bridge To Possible, we showcased 4 demonstration pillars:
In addition, we brought to life two compelling use cases with The City of Drones and Leap to the Future to highlight how technology is used as a vessel to create a world of potential.
Laurent Degré, Cisco France's General Manager moderated a panel discussion on the CEO Forum with Gerri Elliott, Cisco's #2, EVP, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer alongside Giovanna Carofiglio, Distingued Engineer at CISCO, Claudia D'Ambrosio, Research Scientist at CNRS / Polytechnique. The theme was :
Technology has advanced as an industry but still does not represent women in a way that mirrors the rest of society. Looking at some initiatives to help promote women’s careers and leadership, watch the 20 min video below to learn more.
Finally, we announced our CSR partnership with Techfugees, a non-profit that coordinates the international tech community's response to the needs of refugees and asylum seekers.
Cisco redefines innovation at Vivatech to enable businesses to unleash their creativity.
