Channel’s Cisco Monogamy

Cisco should be happy this year as it managed to just pip HP—a scenario repeated from last year. Cisco has scored heavily on most categories under product quality and online support as well as after-sales support. However, Cisco needs to put in real effort in developing its marketing support as the survey results indicate that the company has scored low points from channel partners as compared to most of its  peers. Furthermore, Cisco has lost ground in all the sub-parameters in the overall relationship management criteria.For one more year, Cisco has emerged winner in the DQ Channels channel satisfaction survey 2014 in the category of active networking. Stiff competition prevailed in this segment, and at the end, the company with extra uber, won the top spot.

However, what still keeps Cisco as the favorite of the channel partners is its strong endorsement of all sub-categories under product quality. Be it the technological leadership of the product, diversity of its product range, price vs performance ratio, overall product reliability as well as conformance to specifications, Cisco has heavily outscored all its competitors.

With the industry now coming of digital age, online support and efficient partner portals are a must to be a leader. And Cisco scores on that front too with leadership position in all parameters under online resources.

Last year’s runner up HP, has this year also maintained the same position. The company has gained commendable ground in terms of marketing support, commercial terms and relationship management. As per weightage provided by partners online support was given high ratings and this is parameter wherein the company will have to buck with some concrete initiatives.

HP has been rated high by channel partners for holding their commitments, channel engagement initiatives like training and certification. The company’s backend incentives and fulfilment system in place has received much appreciation by channel partners. However, turnaround time seems to a bit of an issue for the company, which needs attention from the vendor.

Brocade, Juniper and DLink are in more or less same lines in terms of overall performance. Brocade seems to be slowly catching up with HP in most of the parameters while Juniper and DLink have a bit of ground to cover in terms of catching up. Currently, as per the survey, Brocade offers best margins, while Juniper has technology leadership and DLink has an efficient service approach and system in place backed by good reward systems. Avaya has a lot of ground to cover in most of the parameters evaluated in this survey.

Swot Analysis of Winner Trio

Strengths

Cisco

• Technological leadership of the product
• Diversity of the product range
• Richness of online resources offered

Weaknesses

• Less allocation of funds for marketing (co-op funding)
• Lack of innovativeness of market development programs
• Lack of effectiveness with which vendor manages disruption due to its change in personnel

HP

Strengths

• Training and certification programs for channel partners
• Consistency in honoring commitments made by the Vendor’s personnel to the partners
• Back-end incentives and its settlement

Weaknesses

• Lack of online Partner Portal & its effectiveness
• Delayed turnaround time
• Lack of richness of online resources offered

D-Link

Strengths

• Reward systems
• Proactive Service Approach
• Presence of vendor’s service centre in locality/city/region

Weaknesses

• Lack of overall product
  reliability
• Less diverse product range
• Lack of online resources offered