By Giovanni Stea, Fenil Kacharia, and Nayeli Torres

At Cisco Canada we prioritize providing our partners with resources, that means valuable information is the key to keep us engaged. Without further ado, we’d like to announce the top topics you need to keep in mind for the end of this summer and beginning of the fall.

First and foremost, we would like to thank all our partners for trusting on us and to identify together interest and opportunity to take their customers to a higher level. We also created the New Cisco Partner Program which offers benefits tailored to your business model across every role (Integrator, Provider, Developer, and Advisor—each at whatever level fits your business—Select, Premier, or Gold), improving your ability to accelerate sales and build customer relationships into the future.

Benefits of partnership:

• Increase your flexibility: Accelerate sales by working with us in the way that’s best for your business.
• Showcase your practice: Expand and differentiate your practice to showcase your unique value.
• Enhance your profitability: Tap into new possibilities throughout the lifecycle to drive profitable growth together.
• Simplify your relationship with us: Increase return on investment with Cisco and make the most of our offerings–and yours.

We will continue working closely with our partners reviewing their investments and priorities to create and execute a PXP plan.

Events –

We’re so excited to “see” you on November 9^th at Partner Summit, the virtual format allows us to engage with more partners than ever before. Same as last year, all registered Cisco partners can participate and enjoy the executive insights, rich content, and special guests that are the hallmarks of our premier partner event. We will also recognize our top-performing partners and their incredible achievements. We are passionate about producing this event to help you succeed and ensure that you continue to profit and grow. As we always say, “When our partners succeed, Cisco succeeds.”. Save the Date

On October 20th and 21st, we have the opportunity to present our joint strengths at Cisco Connect Canada. This event is the industry’s premier educational event for IT, networking and business professionals We invite you and your company to participate in this virtual event. The theme of our event is ”Turn IT Up”, and this year we want to discuss, inspire, and combine our expertise and energies to make a difference, together. (Link to come)

We understand that technology is evolving faster at an ever-increasing rate. And as leaders in the networking and security space, we want our partners to build a strong practice to support our customers. So, starting September 21^st, the Canadian System Engineering team will start a fresh round of Learn 45 training for the presales engineering teams at our partners. This is the avenue to stay up to date with and get trained on the latest and greatest from Cisco. We will run this training bi-weekly till the end of the Cisco Fiscal Year 2022 (until July 2022). In this training, we upskill the presales SE team at our partners on a wide range of topics ranging from SASE, security, Full-stack observability and many more. And to make it fun, we have prizes to give out in each session. So, keep an eye out for an invite from your Cisco representative or reach out to us if you want to learn more.

Perform plus – Cisco prides itself by offering some of best rebates and incentives for our partners. And if you have been a Cisco certified partner, you know the benefits of Perform Plus. Perform Plus is a global rebate program rewarding partners for achieving overall product growth with Cisco, across all market segments. Partners can also earn bonuses for growth in Enterprise Network and Security, growth in the Select, Mid-size and Small customer segments, as well as an additional bonus for selling targeted portfolio. We have some great new updates to share with you. So Join us for a Perform Plus FY22 program launch on 15 September 2021. In this session, you will learn:

• Overview of the FY22 program
• Perform Plus program changes
• Entry eligibility requirements
• Rebate compensation structure

Speaking of rewards, last month we announced some updates on one of our most valued incentives program – VIP (Value Incentive Program). With VIP, partners can earn rebates and increase margins, use rebates to reinvest in your business with Cisco and build recurring revenue stream. In this 38^th installment of the VIP, we have added incentives on IoT subtrack, new incentives for annuity offers and updated the eligible SKUs. If you are wondering how to enroll, we have made it easier with one-time enrollment. Once you sign the Channel Program Incentive Agreement (CPIA), you are autoenrolled in the VIP program if you meet the eligibility criteria. Checkout the new updates on VIP 38 here.