Jose van Dijk: From 180 Tools to One Unified Partner Platform

Chip Rodgers  0:01  
Yeah, okay, here we are. We are at Cisco Live Chip, Rodgers, CMO at workspan, and I'm so excited to be here. The place is buzzing. We're on the expo floor. I'm here with Jose Van Dyke, who is vice president of partner performance and experience, which is fantastic, Jose. Welcome.

Jose van Dijk  0:18  
Thank you so much. It's fantastic to be here with you, the work spend team, all of our partners, all of our Cisco customers, like you said, loads of energy here on the floor.

Chip Rodgers  0:28  
It's incredible. And I love that we are actually standing right in front of the partner co sell lounge, where Cisco is featuring a lot of partners that you're co sell with. And that's just so great to have that, have that experience, and have the coast have having co sell such an important part of Cisco.

Jose van Dijk  0:47  
Absolutely. Yeah, you know what? What my team is responsible for in the fewest words possible. We are trying to maximize those relationships, maximize between Cisco and all of our partners. And you know, we're basically the advocates for the partner, for all of our partners here. So what we do with work spend definitely helps us to do that. Oh,

Chip Rodgers  1:09  
that's fantastic. So Jose, you have been through a big effort for you and your team, reducing, simplifying, bringing everything down to really simplify the experience for partners. I think at one time, you said there were 130 80, and you brought it down to, like, some small numbers that's been fit

Jose van Dijk  1:31  
Absolutely. It's been quite a journey, actually. So yeah, indeed, when we started, when I started this role, I asked the partners, like, what are your top 10 tools that you're using. Basically, what they gave me is like 180 tools. All of these tools were siloed, not working together. So that's the first thing we did. We reduced and that we make looked at like, what can we integrate? How can we reduce these number of tools, and how can we have them work together? So we've done like, 53% reduction already. Well now goal to 60% and we're not done by that, but what I want to make sure of is that these tools are not fragmented anymore, that they're not siloed anymore. And so we built this one platform. We call it pxp partner experience platform.

Chip Rodgers  2:16  
Makes sense. Good name. That's

Jose van Dijk  2:19  
what we think. And on this partner experience platform, we just adding on these tools. We're not doing lifts and shifts. We do everything that we put onto the tool needs to be an improvement, and with that improvement, we are giving a comprehensive overview analytics so that our partners can plan and execute on their on their strategy, all on one platform. So that's why they can turn the execution and the moment, monitor progress and make sure that it's all on the one pxp umbrella. So that's the simplification. Actually,

Chip Rodgers  2:50  
that's fantastic. So, and what are the kinds of things that partners are doing with the PSP platform? How are they, how are they engaging? How are they connecting with, with Cisco? Yeah,

Jose van Dijk  3:01  
that's a great question, because, of course, there's a lot going on, so you got to make sure that we prioritize. So pxp has all been done with, you know, co designing with our partners, and what they ask us to focus on first is a lot of you know, the skills, the entitlements, you know, the certifications, specializations, anything that supports their strategy. That's what we have on pxp now. They have also a single view of all of their incentives and funds with peer benchmarking, so they want to know how they can drive profitability. And if you have, like, peer benchmarking, like, how do I do compared to my BS in the industry, and what do I need to do in order to go up in the ranks? We give them that kind of insights. So it's way more than simplistic simplification only. It's also linking like customer usage to renewal data into funds management, the one that we do with work spend. And you know this example only has already driven like three times more the life cycle engagements than we ever had before in just half a year.

Chip Rodgers  4:08  
That's fantastic. That's great. The business, yeah, yeah. So partners, the partner. It sounds like partners are really reacting positively to it.

Jose van Dijk  4:16  
Oh, they you know what we have seen so far from a partners is what we're hearing is like a 15 to 20% productivity increase. The number of users go up every day. And of course, the more that we bring on to the partner experience platform, the more usage. So for example, there are four areas that I think that are coming soon on pxp. That's what we're working on with the team,

Chip Rodgers  4:40  
great. Well, a sneak preview. Yes, awesome. Here we go. I

Jose van Dijk  4:43  
mean, that's what we have, Cisco life. Well, right? Fund management, more integrations of telemetry data. Never had that before. That

Chip Rodgers  4:51  
is really cool. I wanted to talk about that. So telemetry data, so you're actually pulling data out of Cisco Systems and then using that to help make. Measure and track what's going on, yeah,

Jose van Dijk  5:01  
and they can drive their ROIs analytics, customer adoption, all in one tool. So it's fantastic. More about performance agility, of course, is that with regards to, you know, this whole fund management, we had seven different separate tools that partners had to use, and internal Cisco uses as well. Now goes onto one tool, onto pxp. So enormous pain point that we are relieving for our partners. So that's one as well incentive management, more opportunities for data analytics. But for example, sustainability calculator, I mean, Chuck talked about it on stage. Number five, priority added now for Cisco is sustainability. We will have a sustainability calculator on pxp, and then last distributors. Our distributors are so extremely important for us in Cisco as we know so, what we can now do is we have a dizzy view on pxp, and it allows our resellers to give proxy to their distributors so they can work even more closer together in order to grow their Cisco practice. So we're super enthusiastic about all of this,

Chip Rodgers  6:10  
so it's fantastic. So this, this kind of information that you're providing to partners. I mean, it's obviously helpful for partners, but I would think it's also helpful for their customers as well, so that they can make statements about what they're doing with Cisco and the value that they're delivering to customers. Oh, absolutely.

Jose van Dijk  6:26  
But, you know, we haven't talked about ecosystem partners, that is something super cool as well what we're doing. So basically, we have all indirect, all non reseller partners. They're all starting their journey now on pxp. So this includes any other ecosystem partner, like a developer advisor, any kind of solution technology partner. And what this does, I mean, co selling. That's what we do together, exactly. Huge opportunity for our partners to support their customers again, to drive how we offer, the incentives, the marketing and other capabilities. Anything that partners can do to collaborate together in a co sell fashion, to grow the business and outcomes together, that's

Chip Rodgers  7:10  
fantastic. Jose, this has been terrific. I really appreciate you taking a few minutes and sharing some of the things, some of the exciting things that are going on with Cisco and and Cisco partners and pxp, the things you've been rolling out, and you said partners have been reacting really positively to it. They're using increased usage and and that's, that's what it's all about. Yeah, no.

Jose van Dijk  7:32  
Thank you so much. And I have to thank you for all of the work that we do together in order to drive the business together. So much appreciated. Thank you,

Chip Rodgers  7:41  
fantastic. Thank you Jose, and thank you all for joining us, and we will see you later today, and we're here at Cisco Live. Okay. Thanks everybody. Thank you.

Jose van Dijk  7:54  
That was super year.

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