Pramodh Menon-Sr VP, Partner Business Group, Cisco
Ali On Content / 20 Jul 2012
What is your perspective about the Indian SME sector and how would you define the role played by Cisco?
The small and medium businesses (SMBs) are major drivers of the economy, more so in an emerging country. The world over, most of the innovation, growth and diversity come from fast-growth businesses in this sector, which represent more than 90 per cent of all the businesses globally and 60 per cent of the workforce. In India, SMBs make up 95 per cent of all businesses and their total strength is 35 million. According to a study, they also contribute close to 60 per cent to the GDP growth. A few years back, Cisco did a lot of research on the SMB segment and understood that they have the same type of business requirements as large companies with a need to connect, access information, and collaborate. With this understanding, Cisco has invested over USD 3 billion in R&D to develop customised SMB products that provide end-to-end technology solutions ranging from network connectivity, security, video, storage to unified communication tools that enable seamless collaboration and connectivity, anywhere, anytime. The SMB market has been growing steadily and is one of the fastest growing segments for Cisco in India.
What is the nature of Cisco’s business operations for the SME segment?
We aim to create solutions that help our customers gain a sustainable edge over their competition, improve productivity and efficiency and at the same time maximise ROI and profitability. To this end, we have developed a range of products and solutions that address the various technological requirements of the SMB customers that also takes into consideration the desire on their part to scale their business when the opportunity arises. At the beginning of FY11 Cisco made a significant shift in the commercial and SMB business by introducing the ‘go to market’ model. This 100 per cent ‘partner-led’ model is highly scalable and efficient and empowers Cisco partners to lead customer engagements across all such segments where Cisco may not have a high touch sales presence. The new model provides partners with the opportunity to acquire new customers through a deeper relationship with Cisco.
Are Indian enterprises smart enough to use the potential of IT in a creative and more prudent way in their companies? How is Cisco helping them on their path of innovation?
IT adoption among Indian SMBs is rising and they are increasingly becoming more aware of the role technology can play in growing their business and operational efficiency. SMBs earlier would focus on investing primarily in technology infrastructure that was a business prerequisite. However, increasingly we have been witnessing a paradigm shift. SMBs no longer just compete within their own niche segment but they now aim to play in a global arena and are looking at adopting technologies that will help them scale their business as required and give them a competitive edge. We are seeing an upward demand for unified communications, virtualisation technologies, data storage and security from our SMB customer base. Our clients can choose from our portfolio of solutions customised for the SMB segment as detailed below:
- Cisco Small Business: A complete portfolio of affordably priced networking products for the transactional buyer with typical networking needs.
- Cisco Small Business Pro: A complete family of networking and communications products that work together as part of easy-to-manage, fully integrated solutions designed for the business that is open to guidance about technology.
- Cisco Enterprise: Class products for small and medium-sized businesses with sophisticated needs that deliver proven performance, flexibility and scalability.
- Switching
- Routing
- Security
- Data Centre
- Digital Media Systems
- Tele-Presence
- Unified Communication and Collaboration Tools
- IP Surveillance
- Wireless
- Video
- Storage
The first challenge is the need for a solution that provides them simple plug-and-play capabilities since most small businesses don’t have large IT teams or departments. The second challenge would be the availability of flexible credit so they can invest in only the right amount of technology at the right time, based on the needs of their business. Apart from these, monetary concerns play a huge role when SMBs make technology investment decisions. Without a convincing argument that the said technology will aid their bottomline growth, SMBs are very wary when making IT purchase decisions.
Cisco supports these needs through plug-and-play products such as the Unified Communications Manager Business Edition 3000 - an all-in-one solution specifically designed for mid-sized businesses aimed at meeting their needs for networking and voice communications. A key feature of these Cisco products is the plug-and-play capability wherein all that is required by the customer is to plug the solution in for it to start working. These solutions are also backed by Cisco’s guarantee and full service support to ensure that all SMB pain points are taken care of. Additionally, Cisco provides financing through Cisco Capital, a sales enablement arm of Cisco, through which we offer attractive finance schemes to SMBs in order to shoulder their burden when making big capex decisions. The comprehensive solutions model has proven to be very successful for Cisco with the result that the SMB market is one of our fastest growing segments the world over.
Can you elaborate a bit on Cisco’s approach in providing complete financing and other solutions?
With finance being a big part of the equation for SMBs when considering technology investments, we have introduced Cisco Capital so that our customers can avail of a number of easy financing schemes, including zero per cent financing options for certain products and solutions. Our partners too can benefit from financial assistance as Cisco Capital offers part-progress payment at certain installation milestones so that their financial burden during a customer engagement is reduced. This shifts the financial burden during the installation process away from the partner, and enables them to utilise their resources for customer satisfaction.
To summarise, Cisco Capital is uniquely positioned to provide:
- Customers with highly competitive rates for Cisco equipment, software and services.
- Flexible terms and payment structures.
- Protection against technology obsolescence and assistance with the transition to next generation communications technology.
How are you placing Cisco’s SME products for enhanced visibility?
Cisco is a 100 per cent partner-driven organisation. We have a strong network of over 1,200 partners along the length and breadth of the country. In addition to Cisco’s marketing and demand generation support to partners, Cisco has introduced the NOW Van, a custom-fit mobile van with Cisco technologies that visits specific tier 1, 2 and 3 cities. The van enables our medium to small customers experience Cisco technology first-hand and understand the kind of efficiencies that can be derived from investing in the right technologies. The van has proven very successful for Cisco and has also been honoured with a number of awards over the past two years.
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