Message from the GM –

Looking forward to 2024 and Progressive Product Expansion

Thank you for your support and loyalty in 2023. Our parent company, Orchestra Group, committed to providing more development resources last year, taking a deep dive into how our products work. With a fresh set of eyes, this led to product adjustments to build a better foundation for our tools.

With that work done, we are now looking forward to some significant evolution in the value our tools provide to not only Cisco Partners and their Pre-Sales teams but to also deliver a new offering for Managed Service Providers (MSP’s) for Predictive Network Maintenance.

As resources are being reduced, especially for SMB’s, MSP’s can expect to see significant growth. MSP’s will benefit by adding predictive network maintenance into their tech stack for ongoing assessments. This will help automate risk reduction and increase resilience in their customer’s network assets.

We are excited about helping the managed services operations teams to be more proactive with their maintenance services instead of reactive. MSPs will be able to deliver a better level of customer service and network and security posture. I highly recommend reading the blog below by CTO, Jacob Ukelson, on the unique difference the new AssetXpert 3.0 will provide for MSPs when it is available this quarter.

I am also excited to share that there are advances for Pipeline Insight Tool (PIT) coming soon with new modules and extra data streams that you can’t get anywhere else. Check out the article on the PIT Roadmap below.

We are just getting started!

Helping you achieve your business outcomes

Cisco continues to add better insights for Partners. However, they have limits on what they can share around Disti Deals during pre-sales, actual VIP rebates, Multivendor information, and alternates during presales that can impact Cisco program profitability.

We are here to provide those extra insights, along with much of the same information Cisco provides in digestible dashboards for a single view of your pipeline or business. This will minimize some of the spreadsheet work you do today.

Our upgrades this quarter are happening due to your influence. Please continue to let us know about your gaps and challenges. We are here to help! Feel free to reach out to us at any time at sales@netformx.com.

Sincerely,
Mark Bickerstaffe

The PIT Roadmap (Q1) – Simplifying More Pre-Sales Motions

One of the key things we do other than provide software tools is provide customer success managers that go beyond support issues. We engage with customers to understand their business and get the opportunity to hear about some of their challenges. We listen to their needs and desires to better manage their Cisco pipeline and earn more rebates.

While we couldn’t respond to every feature or module request, there were several things that we were hearing over and over again. This has led to the development of new features, modules, data feeds and more expected to be available this quarter.

There are 4 areas we are working to enhance in the Pipeline Insight Tool (PIT).

• Improved Modeling – This will include potential ROI on ‘what if’ scenarios on ‘your’ Specializations; then, also easier Competitive reseller Modeling.
• Autoloading of distributor pre-sales BOMs – Full Disti Deal data will provide for better analysis and reporting. TD/Synnex and Ingram are the first two Distributors we are working with for API onboarding.
• Suggested replacements for SKUs –
  • The first deliverable will be for suggested replacements for Non-eligible SKUs in a BOM
  • Then for SKUs with comparatively higher VIP rebates than SKUs used in selected BOMs will become available.
  • After that a new feature will be for the customer to be able to input preferred SKUs due to pre-defined or common reseller design configurations.
• Selected Pre-Sales Opportunity Pipeline Management – The reseller will be able to identify and select their key pre-sales Deals for analysis and VIP forecasting.
  • For example, they could pull a report of the Top 10 Committed Quarter Deals so they could include the calculated VIP as part of their Sales Forecast review.

Keep sharing your needs with us and we will see what we can do to make it a reality.

Predictive network maintenance keeps MSP’s customer networks humming

A Blog by Jacob Ukelson, D.Sc., Netformx CTO

Last week Jacob Ukelson blogged about how Predictive Network Maintenance can make a significant difference for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) by predicting and prioritizing ever-changing threats to reliability and resilience of their customer’s networks. Additionally, he explains the importance of understanding your’ customers network and security posture.

Through predictive network maintenance based on AI machine reasoning, Netformx AssetXpert 3.0 can be a game changer for MSPs to ensure customer networks have healthy postures that mitigate risk and perform as expected. When released AssetXpert 3.0 will give MSPs an ongoing, accurate view of their customer network environment, automatically assess network and cyber risks, and prioritize the firestorm of threats and alerts so you can focus your efforts on the issues with the greatest impact.

Reach out your account manager or sales@netformx.com with any questions or opportunities. We are happy to help!

DesignXpert/Discovery Users Must Run the Updater due to a Cisco API Change

Cisco has changed their API’s which required Netformx to update their processes to access the Cisco information in DesignXpert and Netformx Discovery. The old API’s will stop working soon.

All DesignXpert/Discovery users should run the DesignXpert Updater or review the 4 steps in the Product Update article for continued access to Cisco data.

If you have any questions, please contact support@netformx.com.

Netformx is working to get VIP43 Ready

Cisco has just released the VIP43 SKU’s this week, so as usual Netformx is busy at work getting our tools updated to align with this new VIP period. We have also begun work on our Netformx VIP Index report (NVI). The NVI Report will highlight the changes from previous VIP periods to now. All of this hard work is intended to get us to a point where we can identify and recommend where to focus your Cisco selling motions for the highest VIP43 rebate payouts. Stay tuned!

If you have immediate questions or need support don’t hesitate to reach out to our customer success managers for assistance at support@netformx.com.

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