Executive Thought Leadership

I’m pleased to share with you this month the results from the second Thought Leadership Summit held in August 2002. These summits provide CIOs, their colleagues, and executives within Cisco with the opportunity to gain insights to drive changes in channel management and to learn from each other in a participative, cross-industry format.

At the summit, the discussion of "Channel Management Strategies: Digital Partnering" centered on how manufacturing and production firms and retailers and channel partners can reinvent their relationships through adoption of Internet technologies that enhance collaboration, coordination, and rapid exchange of critical information.

Summit participants included executives from Cisco, Eaton Corporation, General Motors, Lowe's, Sun Microsystems, and Whirlpool, as well as professors from the Harvard Business School, the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Takeaway issues included:

• Collaborative channel investments must be tailored to the partner; digital collaboration can enhance revenue by enriching important partnerships and reduce costs by automating less significant relationships.
• Although a wealth of customer information is available to retailers, that valuable data is not always shared with channel partners because of the risk, whether real or perceived, of damaging a brand with a privacy violation.
• Combining e-learning for channel partners with the right incentive structure effectively aligns channel partners.
• Manufacturers have an equal opportunity to collaborate with suppliers as well as distribution channel partners.

In this issue of the Executive Thought Leadership Quarterly, you’ll hear from Surinder Brar, Cisco Director of Marketing for Worldwide Channels, on Cisco’s best practices in the channels area. The Guru Q&A includes an exchange with Das Narayandas , Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, who provides academic insight into the channels area.

Thought Leadership

Sharing best practices was a primary goal of the recent Thought Leadership Summit. This quarterly brainstorming session explored a variety of innovative channel management and digital partnering strategies to help companies reduce overhead and increase productivity by enhancing the collaboration and exchange of mission-critical information up and down the supply chain.

Cisco's Surinder Brar, Senior Director of Worldwide Channels at Cisco Systems, is responsible for worldwide channel marketing including the channel strategy, certifications and specializations, partner communications, and new channel initiatives. He articulates these best practices in the Thought Leader article, "Channels Best Practices."

Guru Q&A

Das Narayandas is an associate professor of Business Administration and chair of the Business the Marketing Strategy Program at Harvard Business School.

Cisco: In your opinion, how has technology enhanced the producer/channel relationship over the last 12 to 18 months?

Narayandas: It is difficult to isolate the impact of technology on channels during the last 12 to 18 months. This is because several forces operating in the last decade have significantly affected how companies deal with one another. In the last year we have seen the critical mass effect in industrial channels. The availability of robust systems and increased user sophistication are finally enabling most companies to understand that they can use the Internet to enhance customer value created, and not just to drive down costs. Enabling dramatic improvements in value created is a clear demonstration of how technology has spurred dramatic changes in channels.

More of Narayanda's reflections can be found in From the Experts section of the Business Industries and Solutions Web site.

I hope you enjoy this issue of the Executive Thought Leadership Quarterly .