Cisco has continued to evolve its recently overhauled 360 channel partner program, moves that a program executive noted included new incentive structures and that the program itself recently went through “critical phase.”

Cisco’s partner program came out of its year-plus overhaul in January, with a significant focus on the vendor’s ongoing AI push, while phasing out the two-decade-strong Value Incentive Program (VIP). The high-level adjustment was in streamlining its partner evaluation from 22 specializations across 15 business units down to six focused portfolios: networking, security, cloud and AI infrastructure, Splunk, collaboration, and services.

Tim Coogan, SVP for global partner sales at Cisco, told SDxCentral in an interview that “nobody liked” that legacy program when it launched and that it eventually went through dozens of iterations before hitting its term limit. The new program builds on those iterations with what Coogan said is Cisco’s belief that “you should reward and incent behaviors that are mutually beneficial.”

This involved changing the old program, which Coogan said “was volume centric,” to “clearly aligning investments to rewards in a way that embraces the portfolio.”

“Can we sell each piece of the Cisco portfolio independent of one another? Of course, we can. We are huge believers in open standards and open APIs, but we recognize that there is an intrinsic value when we sell across our portfolio with our partners,” Coogan explained.

Coogan added that Cisco has been “wildly pleased with the way the launch went,” but acknowledged it has also worked through necessary changes since that launch. One specific change was in reinstating compute deal registration following backlash from the partner community.

Adjust and change as necessary

Cisco earlier in the year had removed a specific compensation package for its Unified Compute System (UCS) lineup due to what Coogan said was done due to “unprecedented” changes happening across the broader technology ecosystem.

“The changes that were happening in the compute and the memory space, in particular, we're requiring all companies to make some really dynamic adjustments,” Coogan said. “We made one that was logical and sound, and we took feedback from our partners, and I think we were able to address that in a way that is, I think, very Cisco-esque. We acted quickly and logically, we responded equally quickly, and I think we make those adjustments on the fly.”

Cisco more recently revamped its Talent Bridge website, updating it from a "traditional job board" to a site designed to help channel partners better prepare employees to support the vendor’s broader adjustments to its go-to-market ambitions.

Lori Holloway, branding and communications manager for Cisco’s Talent Bridge program, explained in a blog post that the updated platform will focus on a handful of “practical partner needs” and look to diminish “hiring noise.”

These updates include alignment of candidate skills with roles; better visibility into certifications and credentials to support evaluations; integration into existing hiring tools; support for partner branding to help align candidate opportunities; and platform compliance with privacy standards.

“Cisco Talent Bridge is evolving from a traditional job board into a comprehensive career-support ecosystem designed to help partners identify and engage talent with greater confidence,” Holloway wrote on what Cisco is attempting to do with the changes. “Rather than focusing solely on job postings, Talent Bridge supports the hiring journey – from talent discovery to candidate engagement. By bridging learning, skills, and opportunity, the platform helps partners build consistent and relevant talent pipelines aligned with real business needs. The intent is straightforward: reduce friction in the hiring process and improve clarity at every stage.”

That move aligned with what Coogan said was an important support tool for those channel partners.

“We are deeply committed to treating our partner ecosystem as a logical extension of the Cisco field teams,” Coogan said, adding that “the way we share use cases, the way we share training materials, the way we share tools and resources internally, should as closely as possible mirror the deliverables that we give to our partners.”

Coogan did add that while this mirroring might not perfectly align at times, “but what we need it to be is arming our field teams and our partners' field teams in a parallel fashion that allows us to accelerate into the market and not have everything be a shock to the system.”

These moves have so far seen traction.

“We have asked our partners to invest differently in their training,” Coogan said, adding that “the appetite for an adoption of … certifications, the use of the training materials we've made available to our partners indicates that they're not just doing that to get certified, they're doing it because they see value in those learnings translating into their ability to deliver outcomes to our customers.”

Cisco’s program overhaul did come at a time when others in the technology space were working through similar changes of their own, some of which drew a mixed reception from their channel partners and implementation scorn from analysts.

Coogan explained that Cisco’s timing was pure coincidence and that the vendor was merely adjusting to market conditions and how customers want to consume services.

“We did not change the previous program to the Cisco 360 partner program in response to what our competition was doing,” Coogan said. “We did it in response to what our customers were demanding, what the market was demanding.”

Critical scale and time

Coogan also noted that the program changes were not meant to whittle down its partner base.

“Will there be some natural ebb and flow in different tiers and architectures and segments? Of course, there will,” Coogan said. “The idea here was to align partners that shared the same vision for what we could do with this portfolio, and so I think that we'll know more over time, but we do want partners to see value solutions and outcomes as much as pure bookings as the gauge for success.”

Coogan did add that, “we're also in the early stages, but I think in an exciting time of understanding the broader partner ecosystem, even as it relates to the role that distribution plays in the way we deliver our products and then partners that may not be traditional transacting partners, and how they are part of our ecosystem, so it's one thing that we'll see over time. But again, the purpose of the program was not necessarily the number of the partners, it was their ability to deliver on that on our platform.”

That delivery and compensation just recently hit what Coogan said was “a very critical phase” where the first wave of payments were set to flow through the system. This aligned with the program’s new mandate of moving payments from every six months to every quarter.

“This is a sign of Cisco's commitment to the criticality of cash flow, the criticality of predictability and responsiveness, and so we are very, very pleased,” Coogan said of that process. “The partner feedback has been challenging at times but challenging in a really good way.”