Elisabeth De Dobbeleer & Jason Gallo - Cisco 360 Partner Program Deep Dive | Partnerships Unraveled

In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, host Rick van den Bosch sits down with Elisabeth De Dobbeleer, Senior Vice President of Global Programs, and Jason Gallo, Global Vice President of Partner Value Acceleration, both at Cisco. Together they walk through the design and launch of Cisco 360, the most significant overhaul of Cisco's partner program in more than two decades. The conversation opens with what made this the right moment to act. Cisco's existing program, despite being considered best-in-class, had been built up over 20 years through layers of additions and adjustments, and the complexity had become a genuine friction point for partners. Combine that with a market shifting toward lifecycle selling, an ecosystem that had diversified significantly, and AI changing both what customers need and how they buy, and the case for a new program built for agility became clear. Cisco 360 was designed to recognize both depth and breadth: partners who specialize in areas like security or AI, and partners who bring end-to-end value across the full Cisco portfolio. At the center of the program sits a Partner Value Index, a metric that defines partner value in terms of the outcomes delivered to customers. Building toward that metric required a genuine co-design process. Elisabeth and Jason describe how it grew from a small internal group of disruptive thinkers into a community of hundreds, with structured input from partners via the Partner Operations Advisory Board, open webinars, and a three-day working session in Dublin. The result was a program where partners felt genuinely heard, and a launch on January 25th that went remarkably smoothly. The work continues: advisor, developer, and distribution partner value indices are in development, Splunk integration is underway, and investment in the digital partner experience platform remains a central priority. _______________________________ Learn more about the Channext Partner Marketing Platform https://channext.com/ Subscribe to the weekly newsletter: https://channext.com/channext-newsletter Listen on 🎧: Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast... Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5LBehmU... FOLLOW ► Linkedin:   / channext