Agilitas IT Solutions
Empowering Cisco's Channel Partners

As technology continues to be the catalyst for evolving business strategies and transformation, organisations are reimagining technology's role to ensure better business outcomes. This approach has led Cisco channel partners to seek features that differentiate them from the competition. Most Cisco partners are product sale centric and operate with a constricted budget that restricts them from easily adopting new solutions to boost their operations. Owing to the lack of modern technologies, these companies face difficulty in aligning their business with Cisco's direction of travel. This has led them to identify and collaborate with international service partners to address their evolving business requirements.

One company that has been helping Cisco partners ease this task by aligning them with Cisco is Nottingham-based Agilitas IT Solutions. Founded in 1990, the firm enables Cisco partners to focus on their primary business objectives around customer experience and first-line service by taking the reins of the operational elements that sit in the background. A Cisco Premier Partner, Agilitas collaborates with Cisco's UK, European & global channel partners to help them integrate Cisco services into their existing services capability. "Our non-compete, channel-only approach makes Agilitas the perfect fit for any Cisco partner looking to expand their services portfolio," says Richard Eglon, marketing director at Agilitas.

As a trusted provider of customer-driven IT channel services, the firm is passionate and committed to demystifying technology for Cisco's channel partners, ensuring that every digital problem is solved with a business solution. As a Cisco Premier Partner and channel provider of Cisco services, Agilitas understands the complexities of an ever-changing ecosystem. Cisco has continuously been evolving from a CAPEX to OPEX business model by providing a platform for higher-margin subscription-based services.

Agilitas supports Cisco partners in aligning their business objectives with this new direction and adapting to the changing needs, solution-based selling, and longer sales cycles. "We help Cisco partners focus on different relationships within the customer's organisation, enabling them to articulate value and have a business outcomes-focused conversation," says Eglon.

Combining a collaborative approach with its in-depth industry know-how, Agilitas provides services across the entire Cisco portfolio that includes maintenance services, professional services, network audits, and extensive security projects. Besides, the firm offers EOL and multi-vendor services to provide clients with sufficient time to upgrade and align with Cisco's strategy. It also provides a flexible contractual model to increase Cisco and their partners' revenues and margin to facilitate transitions. Further, the firm has extensive inventory management expertise that ensures it is well-positioned to support Cisco and their partner network in extending the lives of their customers' Cisco estates. This also brings significant sustainability benefits, as partners look to utilise Agilitas’ supply chain know-how to meet growing environmental pressures, therefore delivering a circular economy approach to the provision of technology.

What makes Agilitas unique is its focus on automation to assist partners in streamlining their supply chain. At the heart of this is its ERP system named ‘MORSE’ which started life as an inventory management platform. After extensive inhouse development over the past few years MORSE connects with every touchpoint across the business, including CRM, bid, finance and partner portals. MORSE also allows softwareenabled Agilitas to deliver increased automation, EDI integration, and optimisation into channel partners' systems. All in all, the company's services portfolio is appropriately aligned to the channel partners' changing needs, which results in an improved customer experience.

Over the years, Agilitas has worked with several Cisco partners to improve their business outcomes. One such partner needed to investigate ways to increase their competitiveness across new products. They made considerable headway using select service partners but hit a roadblock in maintaining consistent delivery of productrelated support across partners and managing outsourcing costs. Agilitas was summoned to address the issue. Agilitas prepared a comprehensive program to provide hardware support training on the client's products that they needed support for. It helped to bridge the skills gaps of senior field service professionals and technical support teams. Post completion, the client achieved their desired target of a 30 percent cost saving and migration to outsourced systems.

Having delivered such capabilities to various clients over time, Agilitas is well-positioned to strengthen Cisco’s channel partners’ services proposition. Agilitas has further laid out a strategic plan to grow its footprint to over 100 countries in the next 12-18 months. Currently trading in 67 countries, the firm provides services to channel partners, including resellers, MSPs, Sis, distributors, and the OEMs. "We look forward to continue helping channel firms to release themselves from inventory expenditure, optimise spare parts availability, and enhance the ability to consistently deliver high performance," ends Eglon.