Transforming the industry with partner education and enablement

Client

Overview

Back in 2019, Cisco paved the way for a new operating model for collaborating with partners. The business had recognised that elevating partner capabilities was key to industry (and business) success as every facet of life becomes more digitally dependent.

The Cisco Black Belt Academy was conceived as a role-based education framework that assists Cisco partners and distribution in selling, deploying, troubleshooting, and renewing the latest technology and software solutions. It provides enablement tools and programmes for back-end operations to better assist joint customers.

The challenge for Cisco was articulating the transformational value of the model, while educating various audiences on the benefit of institutional and personal commitment to sustained learning. This ‘educate & empower’ philosophy was a fundamentally different approach to traditional ‘refer & reward’ partner models of other tech vendors.

What we delivered

At the outset, The Rubicon Agency was approached to undertake the proposition development to create clarity and relevance for a host of audiences including engineers, architects, sales – and deployment, licencing and CX pro’s. A separate track was required for business leadership roles – building bridges between improved performance and Black Belt participation.

This evolution was a significant pivot for Cisco as a business too. Rallying the whole organisation around delivering >100 learning tracks would require commitment and contribution from the >75,000 global workforce. Over a 2-year period, The Rubicon Agency supported a wholesale internal communications programme to get all functions in lockstep with the huge change management efforts required to pull it off.

Simultaneously, a phased outreach programme of communication, positioning and education tools was then required to take the model to market. This included keynote insertions in industry events, dedicated partner experiences, broadcast emails, paid social and industry media, organic social media, relationship manager enablement and video marketing.

In-programme, there is also highly personalised set of communication streams designed to recruit, onboard, accelerate, recognise participants as they embark on their 3-step learning path.

What did the campaign achieve?

Black Belt has had a massive impact on the industry, widely recognised by commentators and analysts as a best practice approach for the wholesale elevation of tech advisory services.

The Academy construct of role-based education and enablement has been widely valued too – with >400k learners across 151 countries, involving 11k partners and achieving >70k certified Cisco Black Belts.

The learning tracks and badges have achieved a bottom-line value too – increasing average deal value, booking rate and customer lifetime value.

Furthermore, the programme has cemented the perception of Cisco as a brand that is committed to ensure tech success for partners, customers and the broader industry. It has been instrumental in recruiting new partners to Cisco too.