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Mobility comes down to the lines between online and offline blurring rapidly, with organizations sprinting to put the infrastructure in place to catch up with the trend.

The blurring of the online and offline is happening all around us in a bi-directional manner – where the customer expects to interact with the business however and whenever they wish and get the same experience regardless of where they are or what they are doing- and for the business to be able to deliver exactly the same information and services to the customer regardless of how or where they choose to interact.

Is this new? Maybe not, but the O2O (online to offline) concept was truly brought it to life by the Tokyo Metro and their recently launched innovative offering for consumers.

Tokyo Metro carries 6.22 million passengers daily. This past September they announced a new service with two partners: the convenience store operator 7-11 Japan and the Ito-Yokado supermarket chain. Continue reading “Blurring the Lines between Online and Offline”



Authors

Brendan O'Brien

Director Global Product Marketing

Connected Mobile Experiences

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As Automation Fair was wrapping up yesterday, all of my Cisco colleagues were expressing gratitude to our hosts at Rockwell Automation. We want to congratulate our partners at Rockwell Automation for once again, putting on a very successful user conference. Our partnership has evolved into a truly collaborative and demonstrably successful model for joint product and solution developments, go-to-market effectiveness, industry and thought leadership, all aimed at the same goal: our mutual customers’ success.

Continue reading “Automation Fair 2013 – Final Thoughts from Houston”



Authors

Chet Namboodri

Senior Director

Global Private Sector Industries Marketing

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Over the past few months, the We’re Listening blog has brought you ongoing news about updates to our RMA processes, and the improvements keep on coming. I’ve asked Jim Fuller, Senior Director of Services Entitlement, to return to the blog to share details on the new 3-Way RMA process.  The new process represents a significant improvement for many of our customers and partners, and in the spirit of the We’re Listening blog, was undertaken by Jim’s team in direct response to customer and partner feedback. Share your thoughts on other ways we can simplify your interactions with Cisco, and your suggestions may end up as new capabilities featured on the blog!

jafuller By Guest Contributor Jim Fuller

Our partners provide constant feedback to tell us how we can improve their experience doing business with Cisco. One of our partners’ number one requests is to help them create an RMA via a single step, versus opening a support case with Cisco to remedy contract updates as a result of RMA transactions.

We heard your feedback, and if you’re a partner who “self-spares” (spares inventory from your depot) or a customer who contracts with a partner who self-spares, your Return Material Authorization (RMA) process just became easier. We’ve introduced Partners 3-Way RMA/Self-Sparing.

With this new process, service contracts are automatically updated with the associated serial number swaps when processing 3-Way RMAs.  Available now, the new capabilities provide the following benefits:

1. Delivery of an automated RMA process that supports 3-Way RMA transactions at the time of RMA creation

2. Two serial numbers can now be entered at the time of RMA creation for those partners that self-spare, via the Service Order RMA Tool (SORT):

  • The serial number of the claimed defective part from customer network
  • The serial number of the spare part used by the partner to replace the claimed defective part on the customer’s network

3. Ability to minimize or even eliminate partner overhead to monitor and coordinate contract swaps

Previously, the Partner Self-Sparing model was not systematically supported making equipment difficult to track. Without a standardized process, contract and installed base updates had to be performed manually via a support case process. Now, systematic contract updates will occur at the time of RMA shipment reflecting the spare part (replacing the claimed defective part) on contract, making it easier to do business with Cisco and drastically reducing support cases.

To date, more than 175 partners globally have been enabled, with an RMA success rate of 95%. In FY14, we’re focused on reducing contract cycles and the number of customer escalations even further.

Please contact your Cisco Partner Support Development Manager (PSDM) for further information about enabling these new capabilities in support of your 3-Way RMA/Self-Sparing needs.

Regards,
Jim Fuller



Authors

Curt Hill

Senior Vice President

Customer Assurance

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Enthusiasm was at an all-time high at BAI Retail Delivery 2013 in Denver, CO last week as we continue to see major transformation in the banking industry.  Within the Cisco booth, we demonstrated a series of solutions that enable digital and physical channels to become more interactive and sales focused, while improving the customer’s banking experience. Attendees were excited to walk through various live customer business scenarios – all enabled by the same infrastructure – and available today.

BAI Cisco Booth 1

Cisco’s Omnichannel Booth Experience
The Cisco Financial Services team led the booth tours that took attendees through an end-to-end omnichannel experience. Participants were asked to play the role of an existing customer for the entire demonstration and were shown how Cisco can assist financial institutions in their desire to be more intimate and responsive to their clients’ needs. We demonstrated a seamless customer experience that can drive increased satisfaction and wallet share. Continue reading “Post-event: The Ultimate Omnichannel Experience – Cisco FSI at BAI Retail Delivery 2013”



Authors

Jason Bettinger

Practice Director

Financial Services, Americas Business Transformation

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Partner-Weekly-Rewind-v2Every Friday, we’ll highlight the most important Cisco partner news and stories of the week, as well as point you to important, Cisco-related partner content you may have missed along the way. Here’s what you might have missed this week:

Off the Top

Ken Trombetta, vice president worldwide channels for Enterprise, Architectures and Solutions, was back on the Channels Blog this week with some great new insight around BYOD.

Ken used the information from the Cisco IBSG BYOD Financial impact study and expanded on mobile users willing to invest in BYOD and how BYOD delivers productivity gains and cost savings.

Be sure to join the discussion with Ken and give some feedback on your thoughts around mobility. Continue reading “Cisco Partner Weekly Rewind – November 15, 2013”



Authors

David Durham

Content Strategist

Channels

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It’s not often that I get to meet with hundreds of passionate students who are eager to learn! That was the scene at the Cisco Networking Academy Student Day this week in Chile, which was an incredible chance to meet students and instructors and speak about their future careers in technology.

The Cisco Networking Academy helps individuals prepare for industry-recognized certifications and entry-level information and communication technology (ICT) careers in virtually every type of industry. Nearly 30,000 students participate in the program each year in Chile, and worldwide the number reaches over 1 million.

Continue reading “Students in Chile Hope to Fill Growing IT Skills Gap”



Authors

Julie Chrysler

Program Manager

Cisco Networking Academy

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We’ve been getting a lot of great questions about ACI since our launch as people try and better understand the value of an application-oriented approach. I got the following questions on my blog post about the Application Virtual Switch that probed on some of the thinking behind an application-aware architecture, and why now was the right time to release it (after all, John Chambers called it the most disruptive Cisco innovation in a decade!). Anyway, on to the Q&A:

I’d like to know more about the path that Cisco pursued to evolve towards an “application aware” architecture. This back-story (how Cisco arrived at this juncture) would be very helpful to industry analysts, customers and institutional investors. Here’s some of the key questions on my mind.

– What were the primary roadblocks that inhibited the adoption of this innovative approach in the past?

I would say that the Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) was a combination of a Eureka! moment, that people just never thought of it before, and that it was also an insightful evolution from early SDN technology. So, it might be fair to say that SDN had to come along, and then we realized, here might be a better way to program the network (with an application-oriented model, rather than a network-centric model).

That might be another way of saying that the lack of SDN as a precursor to ACI was a roadblock. But I think of it as networks were just built on hardware that were optimized to pass packets and other very specific tasks. And the limitations of historical networking protocols and traditional network designs, coupled with very limited ways in which you could manage a network and tell it what to do, all served as roadblocks to implementing anything like ACI. So the roadblocks that had to be cleared included the ability to program switches through software interfaces, and to centrally manage the software applications or controllers to orchestrate the broader network, not an individual device. Those are some of the things SDN brought along.

Continue reading “Follow-up Q&A on ACI Methodology and the Pursuit of an Application-Aware Architecture”



Authors

Gary Kinghorn

Sr Solution Marketing Manager

Network Virtualization and SDN

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Ken Trombetta Cisco blog - 10 31 13When Benjamin Franklin coined the famous phrase, “time is money,” I am sure the advances of mobile technology were not on his mind. However, the adage is more relevant now than ever before as organizations evaluate their mobility and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) strategies.

BYOD is Here to Stay

Earlier this year we announced the results of the Cisco IBSG BYOD Financial Impact study. The global research revealed interesting statistics about the financial impact of BYOD including:

  • Mobile users are willing to invest in BYOD. Mobile employees who BYOD (“BYOD-ers”) spend on average $965 on their devices, and use 1.7 personal devices for work. They spend an additional $734 per year on voice and data plans for their BYOD devices.
  • BYOD is delivering productivity gains around the world. Even with a broad mix of BYOD implementation levels, the typical company is, on average, saving money and its employees are more productive.
  • Comprehensive BYOD pays for itself in hard cost savings. Apart from productivity gains, the major cost savings are in three areas: hardware, support and telecommunications costs. Continue reading “If Time is Money, Then it’s Time to Rethink BYOD”


Authors

Ken Trombetta

Vice President, Global and Strategic Partner Organization

Global Partners Organization (GPO)

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As I blog today from the show floor at Automation Fair in the George Brown Convention Center in Houston, the second day of one of the largest industrial automation events is underway. We have had a lot of traffic and interest in the Industrial IP Advantage booth (#1223).

In fact, many booth visitors are asking us, “I get OT (or the reverse, ‘I get IT’)- how can we work together?”  As my Cisco colleague Dave Cronberger mentions in the video below, the relationship has now evolved and certainly both sides see the merit of working together.    Our Industrial IP Advantage community can certainly add to the conversation and give guidance on next steps in getting the most out of IT/OT convergence in order to move towards an IP-centric industrial network.

Continue reading “Automation Fair 2013: Industrial IP Advantage”



Authors

Kevin Davenport

Cisco’s Global Solutions Manager

Industrial Intelligence