In the new digital economy, customers want specific solutions proven by industry or vertical use cases. Recent IDC research indicates that 68% of channel partners are specialized by industry, vertical market, functional area, or other market-specific domain. They also state 52% of the average partners’ revenue is generated from their own intellectual property (IP). This partner IP allows partners to build differentiation and provide specialized solutions for their chosen markets. Resale revenue has shifted to the minority of a partner’s revenue and has been for at least five years.
Unquestionably, Cisco partners are closest to customers and have a deep understanding of their needs. While Cisco is constantly innovating, more external capabilities are required to solve complex and specific customer challenges. Cisco’s open APIs enable developers to extend the capabilities of our products to address the needs of customers.
Today, we see two primary motions of innovation using Cisco APIs. First, our traditional partners are adding development practices to create custom integrations for their customers. Second, we see partner to partner engagements where ISVs are extending their reach through the Cisco channel for solutions, they have integrated with Cisco platforms.
In both cases, partners realize the ability to offer greater value to customers and substantially increase their relevance and business with customers.
But don’t just take my word for it. Here are two examples of Cisco partners – CAE Technology Solutions and Multitek — who leveraged Cisco APIs to transform their practices by bringing to market software solutions built on Cisco APIs.
CAE Technology Solutions and DNA Nucleus
Cisco Gold Partner CAE Technology Services, Ltd. is a privately-held London-based company and multiple award-winning IT infrastructure Solutions provider. In early 2020, as CAE was considering how to deploy a large-scale, complex opportunity that involved multiple government councils, they were faced with a challenge: How to efficiently and effectively roll out 20,000 Cisco Catalyst devices for nearly 1,000 Schools?
CAE saw this as an opportunity. They surmised other customers likely face a similar challenge. CAE wondered if they could build and monetize a robust business process and platform automation platform solution leveraging Cisco DNA Center APIs to streamline large scale deployments?
With this question in mind, CAE turned to the Cisco UK DevNet and EMEAR Enterprise Network teams, which suggested the Cisco JumpStart methodology as a way to facilitate concept development. JumpStart provided a framework that enabled CAE to map its vision with the outcomes they needed to achieve with their customer, while providing access to various Cisco resources. Effectively, by leveraging JumpStart, CAE brought their automation idea to life through a quick 8-week sprint development, creating a new platform that could automate its rather large networking project.
Leveraging the DNA Center API extensions created a competitive advantage for CAE, as they alone were able to meet this class of customer requirements for timely deployment. They were able to deploy a large number of remote locations faster, with less cost, and with reduced error and troubleshooting. CAE, knew they would be able to reuse this application with other customer opportunities, branded it is “DNA Nucleus” and began developing a scalable go-to-market plan.
“Overall, I believe working with Cisco APIs provides Partners with the opportunity to spin up new business lines and revenue streams that previously did not exist.”
Alisdair McKeand, Consultant at CAE
Multitek, Altus and the RoVi
Multitek is a Panama-based integrator with more than 30 years’ experience doing business across Latin America. Multitek’s customer Caja de Seguro Social de Panamá is the nation’s public institution in charge of planning, controlling and administering Panama’s national healthcare and social security services.
This customer needed an automation solution to help break the logjam of incoming calls from their constituents. These requests included status on medicine delivery, as well as frequently asked questions regarding pension payments, pregnancy subsidies and the like. The customer also needed to route non-standard requests to a live agent in the cases where the automated system could not provide answers. In addition, the customer needed a way to provide video-based medical consultation via a web interface that allowed patients to place video calls to specialist doctors in a matter of a few minutes.
Multitek needed a third-party with existing application and API integration expertise, so they turned to Cisco ISV partner Altus Technology to help meet their customer’s requirements.
In response, Altus developed an application called RoVi that integrates with the Cisco Unified CCX Web Chat API. This API extends the UCCX’s native web chat functionality to a richer array of chat channels, such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Twitter DM. It also provides the means to incorporate an intelligent chatbot in between the customer and the CCX agent. They also used the WebEx Teams Web SDK API.
The results? During the first month of operation, RoVi handled more than 60,000 constituent interactions and fulfilled 75% of the requests without human intervention! What an impressive business outcome for Caja de Seguro Social de Panamá – removed the logjam and significantly improved their constituent’s experience.
Transform your practice by developing your own software and solutions practice
CAE and Multitek represent the two typical paths to be taken to leverage Cisco APIs: in-house development or using an ISV’s existing expertise. These are just two of many partners that are transforming their business by bringing to market applications that build upon Cisco’s market leading portfolio of technologies. Are you ready to transform your business by developing on Cisco platforms using our open APIs?
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