Newsletter

March 2015

Volume 3, Number 1

CE / LSSLSS Americas (Q3 FY15):

 

Q3 FY15 Americas Release went live! We migrated existing (Type-5) US/Canada entity to new Oracle ERP system (CG1 in R12).

Why?  Ensures Services sales are correctly reported and taxed in the Cisco entities serving the end customer territory/country. Minimizes Cisco’s exposure to non-compliance risks on import, particularly in high-risk countries.  Scopes are:

Service only quote/order/contract/SOW will be split when Bill-to vs. Site locations are not compliant against the Service BIE rules.

Deal negotiation will require manual check to align with this rule.

During Go Live (Mar 6~7), service contract data was split and migrated to the correct business entity or it will be

Index

CE/LSS

Software Transformation

Unified Commerce Experience (UCE)

PEGA Proof of Concept

Service Business Transformation (formerly C3T)

Cisco Partner Annuity Initiative (CPAI)

2-Tier Next Gen (2TNG)

Renew-on-Time (RoT)

Simplifying and Optimizing Annuity Revenue (SOAR)

Install Base Data Quality (IBDQ)

Acquisition Integration (AI)

CSDM

Scopes:

Quebec French support on invoices and customer facing documents.

Address validation enhancement for US and Canada.

Enforce Federal validation check up front in quoting process.

Remove cascading logic from CSCC to ensure tax is properly calculated on all grouped install site information.

Release details can be found in this presentation.

Service BIE Australia:

Effective March 8, 2015, the Australia operating unit (OU) automated Services Business Inclusion and Exclusion (BIE) rules are enforced. BIE rules determine which customers and partners are entitled to do business with Cisco in a respective country. Services

handled at service contract renewal quoting time.

BIE details are in our WebEx Social post.

China (Type-4a):

Effort resumed supporting sales adoption (targeted in April). Technical release was completed in Q1 FY15. This time it’s only closing the left-over items.

LSS CIL (Cisco International, Ltd.) (Q2 FY15):

Many issues/cases have been identified since   Q2 FY15 Go- Live. There were 21 issues closed, and the remaining 2 issues were fixed in the Q3 FY15 release. For details, refer to the Q2 FY15 Post-Go Live Status Update presentation.

Advanced Services Revenue

Guided Deal Registration (GDR)

Services Discount & Eligibility Evolution (formerly Customer Profile Tool Retirement)

Process Governance and Compliance (PG&C)

Services Business-to-Business (SB2B)

Quoting and Ordering Optimization (Q&O)

Customer Data Management and Pricing and Discounting (P&D) Optimization

Installed Base and Contract Management Optimization

Opportunity Management (OM)

Master Prioritization List ( MPL)

New (Q2 FY16):

Russia will be upgraded from current manual (type-4) entity to automated (Type-5) entity.

BV/ Italy /Japan will be upgraded from current legacy ERP to new ERP

BIE rules are tax compliance rules for all Services sales scenarios.

Realignment:

After considerable efforts and based on continued feedback from the business and functional team, the CE program team will no longer pursue AS revenue migration to achieve substance in these entities.  The requirement of substance remains; as a company and a team, we will have to look at alternative methods to achieve it.

(R12). These are the last entities to move from 11i to R12.

For more details about Services related CE/LSS updates, please refer to this presentation.

Software Transformation

Unified Commerce Experience (UCE)

The Cisco-wide Software Transformation initiative is a central driving force to operationalize and scale Software and XaaS business growth at Cisco, transforming Cisco into a SW company in the Cloud. SCC is playing a consulting role to ensure that the processes that SW and XaaS set up do not impact the Services processes already in place.

In Q2 we completed the assessment of the Q3 FY15 scope, in which the ATO (Assemble to Order) Renewal capability was made available. This capability allows renewal of subscriptions configured under a SW bundle (only the Supply Chain scope went live in Q3; Quote to Order scope will go live at a

UCE is a common workspace for all Commerce transactions (Initial Purchase and Renew/Manage) that include Products, Services, Software Subscriptions, and

Solutions. The goals of UCE include providing a simplified and consistent Quoting and Ordering experience, reducing Sales cycle time, increasing productivity, and adapting agile delivery methodology.

In Q2 we completed the inventory of Service Capabilities and initiated assessments for improvements in the areas of Access Management, Price Protection, and Address Management.

In Q3 we are focusing on finalizing the road map for a business-ready release, completing the analysis and proposal for improvements in the prioritized capability areas, and partnering with the Software program team and UCE IT

future date).

In Q2 we also completed the interim manual post-sale support/entitlement process for Cloud/XaaS offers, as there is no automated service contract creation. SCC is playing an active role in setting up business architectural end-state planning for classic and Cloud/XaaS subscription services.

for delivery.

PEGA Proof of Concept (PPoC)PEGA is a business process management application suite for business application development. Instead of using multiple applications or tools, you can use one application suite that is produced by PEGA Systems. The business process mapping application is used by a large majority of the Fortune 500 companies.

We performed a Proof of Concept, proving these benefits:

The methodology of PEGA implementation can simplify requirement collection and documentation processes.

PEGA speeds time-to-benefit for changing business rules and validations without great reliance on overly stretched IT resources.

Complex contract management business rules maintained in PEGA can be centralized and easily managed by CEOE – Services Commerce Capability business teams.

The PEGA application can handle a large scale of data volume such as Contract and IB data.

In performing this proof of concept, we built a process dashboard that provides:

Process insight into an end-to-end process view from IB Shipment to Contract Entitlement with failure points, actionable data, and automatic case generation for respective teams.

Automated Contract Management capability utilization and health metrics.

Contract updates that PEGA performed included:

Up front data validations for bulk upload.

Business controls to change business rules with proper governance.

Multi-level approval process for validation overrides for better governance.

In performing the proof of concept, the questions we wanted to answer were: Did PEGA provide the capability that we need? Does it go with our Cisco architecture within the Commerce space? Can we use its workflow management concept to resolve some of our business pain points? The answer was “yes” to all of them.

Service Business Transformation(formerly C3T)

We identified future scope, including:

Rationalize Services/Annuity business rules.

Leverage PEGA capabilities when introducing new business capabilities.

Take advantage of GET/GSP and AS/PS optimization and target state transformational opportunity.

Unified Commerce Experience (UCE) – Define annuity commerce capabilities with simplified workflow experience (eliminate redundant workflow elements).

Engage with xRM – Entitlement Base alignment to finalize analysis activities and deliverables for the next 2 quarters, and start carrying out the activities for the coming quarter.

Influence solution and system architecture for C3R12 platform transformation.

Identify cross-initiative capability duplication or interdependencies and influence alignment.

Cisco Partner Annuity Initiative (CPAI)CPAI is a Services-wide initiative that helps Cisco capture partners’ high-volume, lower-dollar amount annuity business. With CPAI, partners can attach and renew services through automation capabilities that help extend sales coverage across the customer base. It simplifies annuity management through connected capabilities of auto-quoting opportunities to business intelligence, thus delivering increasingly profitable revenue.

SCC supports set-up of these partners to enable them to take advantage of the auto-quoting feature. In FY15 thus far, we have on-boarded 46 partners to the CPAI auto-quote notification campaign. The auto-quoting service has two major technologies: Auto-Quote Web Service and traditional RosettaNet B2B quoting capability. We continue to deliver enhancements to ensure these capabilities are performing effectively. On average, there are over 120,000 quotes automated per quarter. Without this automation, it takes approximately 30 minutes from identifying an opportunity to generating a quote, which is a total savings of 60,000 hours.

2-Tier NextGen (2TNG)

In Q2 we went live with APJC POS automation. One thing that was critical to adopt was to remove the ability for external users to override the “serial number null” error. Prior to Q2, all external users could override the serial number validation to generate a valid quote, which led to contracts without serial numbers. After Q2, 2-Tier external users or any other external user creating a quote using the distribution channel cannot override the serial number validation during the quoting and renewal processes. The result has been increased contract data accuracy:

300-500 quotes/quarter with serial overrides avoided.

Reduces Cisco support cases to soft line by approximately 3,000+ cases/quarter.

Reduces TAC support case turn-around time due to missing entitlement.

In Q2 we added a Duration Drop Down to Quick Quote, enabling users to select their contract duration up front.

Finally, much of the work that SCC did for 2-Tier NextGen enabled the entire EMEAR and LatAm theaters to migrate

to CSCC and retire SMS3 during Q1. Looking forward, only US/CAN are still using SMS3, and it will be retired on April 5, 2015.

Renew on Time (RoT)

Simplifying and Optimizing Annuity Revenue (SOAR)

To better encourage early and on-time renewals of service contracts, at the beginning of FY14 there was a reduction in the automatic entitlement period (grace period) for overdue renewals from 60 to 30 days. We now have year-over-year metrics for the success of this program. On-time renewals continue to improve by 10 points, per Q1 FY15 data (72% on time), and there was a continued decrease in overdue contracts by 6% year over year.

As Renew on Time progresses to the next phase, the focus will continue on supporting the initiative goal of on-time service coverage and renewals. This follow-on phase in Q3 included enabling “Service Bridge Automation,” which will expand the ability for direct customers and partners to remain entitled while negotiating contract renewals during the 30-day overdue period. This change sets

SOAR is a Cisco-wide initiative aimed at simplifying the services quoting and ordering experience – simplifying business rules, eliminating rules that are ineffective, improving partner self-sufficiency, driving stakeholder productivity, and increasing sales. To do so, we are looking at top issues, selected based on error counts.

For SOAR Phase 1, after doing an analysis of the most triggered errors across quoting, we came up with seven SOAR scope items that have been committed for upcoming FY15 releases. We have delivered changes for three of the scope items in Q2 (November 2014 release), and the other four were delivered in the Q3 release (March 2015).

Simplified user experience by removing the need for user action to resolve the mid-term downgrade error by changing it from a warning to an informational error:

60,000 warning errors removed per quarter.

Improved user experience by eliminating invalid errors for legacy shared support validation, which were being triggered as a result of a defect:

100,000 hard stop errors removed per quarter.

Q3 FY15 Scope Delivered: Eliminated the need for user action

to accept the Next Business Day Not Available error when Same Day Shipping can’t be guaranteed.

Enabled flexibility for users’ change between billing accounts when they

a foundation for shifting up to $12M of extended entitlement risk accountability to the customer. In addition, to continue promotion of early and on-time service coverage and renewals, a fee-based recovery cost for direct customers and a discount adjustment for partners will also  be enabled, thereby reducing a $100M+ renewal service coverage gap.

Q2 FY15 Scope Delivered: Reduced the contract proliferation

issue by allowing services within the Service program to be compatible to go on a single contract by enhancing Services Compatibility settings. Programs changed were SmartNet and Service Provider Base Service:

Contract proliferation reduced by 3,000 contracts per quarter.

renew and add to existing contracts.

Allowed users the ability to have a different currency between their quote and target contract.

Reduced the problems that users face when they receive an eligibility error incorrectly by fixing a defect in the eligibility validation.

Services Commerce Capabilities is currently underway on our assessment for SOAR Phase 2.

Install Base Data Quality (IBDQ)Cisco Install Base has reached ~1B, out of which 20% has Services coverage. Data quality for the IB is about 56% accurate, and we need to improve the quality of foundational data. Install Base data accuracy is vital, and accurate IB data enables sales growth via Cisco Ready. The goal is to build a single source of truth for our customers’ assets that is reliable, up to date, and easy to manage. Better IB data means fewer service quoting and service entitlement failures and fewer customer escalations.

In collaboration with the IBDQ program team led by Dave Frutos, the Services Commerce Capabilities team played an active role in identifying the critical data elements for Install Base and Service Agreements standards and rules to

We finalized the business requirements and solutions for the following scope items, which are being delivered as follows:

Q2 FY15 Scope Delivered: Portable Solutions to introduce Last

Date of Support (LDoS) validations, reducing potential inventory/sparing cost of ~$83M for the 57% of unauthorized products. Automate the processing of approved Last Date of Support business exceptions. This enhancement saves 45 minutes per Portable Solutions LDoS request and 24-48 hours’ improvement in case turnaround time for customers.

Q3 FY15 Scope Delivered: Improve soft line creation process

through Portable Solutions by

Prioritized scope and scope documentation targeted for Q1 FY16: Enhance Install Base creation and

Point of Sale Service Entitlement failures to reduce ~1.9M failures. Projected to reduce ~2k soft line creation and support cases. This enhancement will improve on-time service entitlement and user experience.

Improve RMA process for Product ID transformation. Potential revenue impact of $4.5M. Not cascade warranty in case of RMA, resulting in over-delivery of ~$772k/year. Additionally update install site and create auto cases for RMA failures.

measure the data quality. We measured that and identified the processes and applications that are contributing to bad data quality. We found that data quality can be improved by:

Identifying and enhancing business processes causing bad data quality.

Identifying root causes, process changes, and technical limitations contributing to bad records getting into the Install Base.

Historical data clean-up.

integrating with centralized business validations engine (IBSAVE) and systematically derive critical attributes like Sales Orders, Ship Date, and Warranty end date. Projected to save ~650 productivity hours annually for CPE. Targeted to improve IB data quality rate by ~3%.

Resolve policy and compliance issues with multiple entitled party service levels on single Multiple Service Level contracts. Service levels with multiple entitled parties will not be compatible and cannot coexist on a single Multiple Service Level contract.

Modify start date calculation rules for Service Attach to align with business rules.

Process improvements for warranty end date to reduce over-delivery and sparing costs.

Cisco Services Fulfillment Manager enables real-time processing of orders for IB creation and contract entitlement, eliminating 40% of the “shipment not found” errors and the seven days’ waiting period for contract entitlement. Improved customer satisfaction resulting from timely service contract entitlement.

The Services Commerce Capabilities team has been playing a consulting role for the historical data clean-up scope and has reviewed and approved eight data clean-up BRDs.

Acquisition Integration (AI)

CSDM

In Q2 FY15 we migrated IB/Service Agreement data on the SourceFire acquisition. We completed primary migrations, consisting of 94k IB and 11k service agreement contracts, and we are currently doing incremental migrations. We expect to be done in Q FY15.

We completed the primary migration for Whiptail, consisting of 20k IB and 200 contracts, and we completed the transfer to the RTB team.

Single SKU SWSS Initiative: This has been released as of Q2, and normalization will continue throughout Q3. Some of the normalization activities include updating SCORE rules. We performed some next-generation configuration set-ups to enforce systematic restrictions so that customers could no longer order ESW and UCSS, which have been end of life’d.

Solution Support: Completed 5

Collaborative Knowledge: This offering is for our knowledge suite and includes deployment, platform, and storage services. We create the end-to-end process flows to enable the purchase of the knowledge suite.

SmartNet Total Care: Created to replace old GSPs with new GSPs to prevent revenue leakage during renewals. We worked on making those updates to the contracts and

We completed the primary migration for ThreatGRID of 30 IB and 26 contracts.

We did a migration of TailF to enable Level 1 entitlement through Cisco TAC. The next phase will be full migration in Q1 FY16 to enable renewals and service delivery entitlement.

new programs: Connected safety and security Contact center SW and Solution support Big Data ACI2: Application Centric

Infrastructure Phase 2

Cisco Adoption Acceleration Services: Created to increase adoption of Cisco products and services. We are currently focusing on two of our service programs: WebEx and SmartNet Total Care.

created end-to-end process flows to ensure the smooth launch of SNTC orderability in CCW.

Combined Services: We tested to ensure that there was a proper revenue allocation for the CS enterprise agreement program.

Partner Support Services (PSS): We migrated the old Partner Support Enterprise Services (PSES) to the new CSPP framework. This aligned it to SWSS.

Guided Deal Registration (GDR)

Services Discount & Eligibility Evolution(formerly Customer Profile Tool Clean-up and Retirement)

GDR is a new process and system for defining and approving promotions, programs, and incentives. Promotion business rules are being moved from Legacy (ePromotion) to the next generation (GDR). GDR will enhance the ability to support more flexible service promotion needs.

In Q4 SCC established a strong engagement with the GDR program team and a stakeholder interlock cadence. Now, we are able to provide visibility to service stakeholders on program status and on our road map.

In Q2 with the first phase of the GDR roll-out, we enabled the capability to

The goal of the Customer Profile tool clean-up is to move a “cleaned set-up” into Single Sources of Truth (SSoT). It is aimed at ensuring accurate service eligibility and discount set-up to improve the quoting experience with reduced manual touch and increased compliance with our rules, resulting in reduced revenue leakage.

All phases of customer profile clean-up were completed as of Q1 FY15, including 146,882 data records corrected for 3,578 customers (e.g., DiData, IBM, HP, CDW, Ingram Micro, Comstor, etc.) in the final phase. As an example, we did multinational data clean-up for AT&T,

Finally, SCC created business flows for all service discount rules and completed a capability gap analysis between the legacy system and the rules-based SSoT system.

Customer Profile Retirement is aimed at aligning products, software, and services; operational improvements for maintenance; automation of some manual processes; and scalability for new business model.

apply multiple promotion codes on a CSCC quote using approved Deal IDs. We also enabled promotion set-up and application by the Services family. The Q2 release resulted in a 17% support case reduction for the GDR pilot countries, from 1,461 cases to 1,214 cases.

In Q2 we worked with the GDR program team to assess and prioritize critical service requirements to be included in the GDR road map.

resulting in a 95% case reduction for them, from 60 cases to 3 cases. SCC also completed the review of 7,820 signed Legal Service Agreements, and found 940 (12%) had service discounts in them. This analysis is being leveraged to set up discounts in the rules-based systems.

Process Governance and Compliance (PG&C)

Services Business-to-Business (SB2B)

Summary Quoting: SCC completed implementation of the globally consistent summary quoting practices for increased transparency in booking justifications and exceptions. We delivered quarterly summary quoting metrics for consumption by stakeholders (Finance, Operations). We documented new summary quoting processes for LDOS extended support and software.

Sarbanes Oxley: We completed five new key financial controls for CSCC and two for AS-Subscription with PriceWaterhouseCoopers, LLC, for completion of the annual Cisco audit cycle. These are the first SOx

As part of SCC’s charter, we support quoting, ordering, and contract management for Cisco’s Services B2B program. SB2B enables distributors/partners to use their own ERP system to directly process quotes, orders, and contract management transactions without manual effort, leading to productivity gains.

13.3M contract updates were sent to B2B partners in Q2 FY15, up from 5M a year ago (Q2 FY14). This allows our partners to maintain accurate contract data with minimal manual touch, and it enables our partners to display their end customers' Install Base data faster (from 7-10 business days to 1-2 days) with greater confidence in the accuracy.

We are actively working with 28 partners and are in the process of onboarding 6. Insight, Datametrix, Eplus, MCPc, KBZ, and A1 Telecom are expected to go live with our contract management solution,

controls established for services transactions on CSCC. We added structure and risk mitigation with narrative key process areas. We completed the walk-throughs, testing, and draft narratives on schedule. Going forward, we will be measuring the effectiveness of the controls and modifying processes to support compliance.

Francization (Quebec’s language requirements charter of the French language): We created a services sustainability policy for CSCC in compliance with Cisco’s requirements. We kicked off the FY15 francization annual audit in December 2014. This audit ensures CSCC’s continued compliance with Quebec’s French government.

In Q2 FY15 our B2B partners utilized B2B for 22% of their Cisco Services order bookings.

which allows them to move their network assets across installed site locations and contracts, and in return, reflects the updates in their systems. Tech Data is migrating from SMS3 to the CSCC B2B Quoting and Ordering solution.

Presidio, which was recently on-boarded, had this to say about their experience with Cisco’s SB2B:

“Hugely valuable for Presidio and

significant value for our end customers”

-- Ben Adams, Director of Sales

Quoting and Ordering Optimization (Q&O)

We improved the customer experience by reducing the average cycle time for FTSS quotes from 9.12 days down to 5.65 days and eliminated the manual intervention that had been required to reconcile an invoice.

Customer Data Management and Pricing and Discounting (P&D) OptimizationCustomer Data Management and Pricing and Discounting capabilities are aimed at simplifying and streamlining our services commerce customer experience and supporting the Ease of

Installed Base and Contract Management Optimization

SCC’s overall focus has been to reduce contract entitlement delays with improvements in the Install Base (IB) creation process. These improvements reduce manual touch by addressing

We enabled the Quick Flow quoting process for 1-Tier users in CSCC, which allows them to process quotes online. We received positive feedback on this change, as illustrated by this company quote:

“I can see a lot of use for this on the day in

and day out little stuff.”

– Orange (UAT session)

We became SOx compliant for Expired Deal IDs in CSCC. The grace period for expired deal IDs was reduced from one year to 60 days.

Doing Business Cisco-wide initiative by optimizing the way our tools price, discount, and manage user and contract access. In Q2 FY15 we made our channel program deal discount application more flexible, and customer support cases for pricing and discount issues were reduced. Specifically:

Increased flexibility to deal application for today’s partner channel program to decrease operational costs for customer support team by $100k annually.

Aligned discount application for deals, effectively saving $50k in operational costs per quarter for customer support team.

Corrected 2,250 data mapping issues for channel program partners to prevent over $20M in orders from failing.

Removed inappropriate access to over 1,000 competitors’ contracts from approximately 50 users.

1,000 support cases/quarter.

SCC learned that, due to a bug, 7.7M covered product lines’ entitlement status was showing as entitled, even though the service expiration date had passed. All 7.7M have been changed to reflect accurate service coverage. Corrected entitlement coverage status will improve install base data quality and prevent customers from claiming entitlement when their expiration dates have actually passed.

Master Prioritization List (MPL)The MPL involves a process to prioritize and plan for whether and/or when Technical Defects (TDs), Change Requests (CRs), and feature requests that have been submitted will be included in the scope of upcoming releases. It provides visibility and transparency to stakeholders and

SCC put an MPL governance plan in place, and we revised and consolidated the spreadsheet columns to promote ease of use for all stakeholders. Lastly, the entire MPL intake process was documented in Web Ex Social.

enables them to participate in the prioritization process.

Since the inception of the new MPL Process back in July 2014, there have been three quarterly releases and three Rapid Releases that were prioritized. Currently, 99 TDs are in development and 109 TDs are in the process of being prioritized.

Best regards,

Angelina Koh

Senior ManagerServices Commerce Capabilities Team

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