5i’s Director of Training Services, Anna Britnor Guest, attended the invitation-only conference to hear first hand from leading Cisco VPs about Cisco’s roadmap and vision.

The summit, attended primarily by former Tandberg partners, had three clear messages to underpin John Chambers’s recent comment that ‘Collaboration is on fire’:

Cisco and Tandberg integration is happening fast and the opportunity for Cisco and Tandberg partners is immense – Cisco estimates the overall collaboration and services market at $100B and video is one of its fastest growing elements.

Carl Wiesse, VP Global Collaboration Sales predicts that collaboration will be the single greatest IT investment over the next decade; the chasm has been crossed and there is a growing gulf between adopters and laggards. Companies will increasingly recognise the ROI of collaboration not just through cost savings but through its contribution to productivity and business strategy. 

Cisco’s big bets are around:

• Video – all devices will be video-enabled
• Virtual – a cornerstone of the any-to-any architecture
• Mobile – has to move out of its existing silo and become integrated into the communications architecture
• Social – will drive a move from document-driven communication to true people-driven collaboration and revolutionise customer care

The message to partners was clear – there is a huge opportunity, Cisco has focused R&D, marketing and partner programmes to leverage and support partners to take advantage of these opportunities. But that doesn’t mean all partners have to do everything. Richard McLeod was clear: You don’t have to play everywhere, choose where to play and where to partner. There are many sales strategies and many approaches.

The summit had a strong message about the customer journey to collaboration in the form of keynote speaker, Morten T Hansen, professor at the University of California, Berkeley and INSEAD, France, and author of ‘Collaboration: How leaders avoid the traps, create unity and reap big results’.

Hansen makes a big claim “Bad collaboration is worse than no collaboration”.

Citing several large global businesses who lost market share due to poor cross-function collaboration, such as Sony losing out to the Apple iPod, Hansen has identified four key barriers to constructive collaboration and how to address and attain ‘disciplined collaboration’, of which companies such as Proctor & Gamble are prime examples. This ‘disciplined collaboration’ enables companies to collaborate to positively impact Innovation, Customers and Efficiency.

He clearly described in his keynote how the four barriers need to be addressed through the right combination of management and cultural support and technology.

It’s a tough challenge for technology partners to address but it will be critical to collaboration – in its business sense - genuinely contributing to the growth and success of companies in the ‘new normal’ business context.

From 5i’s perspective the summit messaging was a strong endorsement of our approach to partner services and training. It’s essential to take a business, not a technology-led approach to collaboration. This is one of 5i’s fundamental values and demonstrated in all we do, for instance:

• Our services start by understanding business goals and strategy and, only after the business outcomes and impact are understood, do we build the technology solution.
• Our sales training equips partner Account Managers with the knowledge, skills and behaviours to take a business-led approach to selling collaboration, developing business level discussions at C-level across key business functions and articulating business outcomes and benefits not technology features.
• 5i has developed a ground-breaking Business Justification Methodology which recognises that productivity and strategic contribution cannot be measured effectively using traditional ROI metrics. It’s a methodology that makes logical sense of subjective expectations and allows business decision makers to make rational and considered decisions about what’s right for their business.

The summit closed with a clear call to action – to choose the opportunities and where you want to play, to build cross-practice business propositions and to focus on increasing customer value through focusing on business outcomes.

5i supports partners in each of these areas, mentoring and partnering to increase and augment partner propositions.

For more information about how we can help upskill your sales team and partner with you on collaboration opportunities contact us