At Partner Summit in November 2019, Cisco announced Business Critical Services 3.0, also known as BCS 3.0. It is the much-anticipated follow-on to Business Critical Services 2.0. Historically, BCS was made up of over 160 completely configurable SOW-based deliverables by Cisco Advanced Services to help customers optimize their Cisco investment. There was little opportunity for partners to deliver services around the offer and, in fact, those Cisco-delivered services would many times compete with services that partners wanted to sell and deliver to customers.
Enter BCS 3.0 and a completely new approach that is more partner-friendly and also more consumable for customers. Here are the highlights:
- Subscription packaging that that is simple to quote and order. No more lengthy SOW-based ordering required, unless needed for more complex deals.
- Simplified, pre-configured packages to meet customer needs as well as enable a partner play where they can differentiate their business. For example, the Essentials package provides remotely-delivered insights and analytics that partners can use to build upon with their own professional services to create an intelligence-based service solution for customers.
- Services that deliver value for every role across the IT landscape. For example, Change Window Support for Network Operations (NetOps) roles and Security workshops for Security Operations (SecOps) roles. This allows partners to unlock new buying centers and also position their services in a way that is relevant for the IT teams at the customer who are consuming the service.
- Predictable pricing using installed base criteria from the customer. Not only does this make pricing more predictable for the partner and customer, but it allows for a lower entry point and the opportunity for partners to sell to customers beyond the Fortune 100.
BCS 3.0 general availability in the US and Canada began on January 31, 2020, with global general availability on March 6, 2020. More importantly for our partners, we will introduce direct partner quoting and ordering anticipated for June 2020. This will allow partners more control over the quote-to-order process and ability to speed the sales motion.
We believe that with the introduction of BCS 3.0, Cisco Customer Experience is doubling-down on our commitment to go-to-market with our partners in a way that is beneficial to both Cisco and partners, as well as (most importantly) driving extraordinary outcomes for our customers.
Please check out the FAQs and PowerPoint presentation for partners, as well as customer facing collateral, on SalesConnect Partner Hub.
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