It seems our customers all want the same thing: help addressing their business needs based on the capabilities they're trying to solve for, help staying ahead of competition, and guidance on the "how" of implementing against their Digital Journey.

This might sound like a tall order, but that's exactly where Cisco and our powerful partner ecosystem thrive!

Virtually every customer today is seeking to address business imperatives linked to one of following four digital capabilities:

• Personalize Customer Experiences
• Enable Workforce Innovation
• Optimize Business Operations
• Manage Risk

For example, within the consumer industry, many retailers are looking to enhance the customer experience by doing such things as engaging customers in store dynamically and predicting and personalizing their engagement.  In manufacturing, some customers want to optimize business operations through increased asset utilization and implement secure remote management services.

In healthcare, other customers may want to enable workforce innovation and patient satisfaction by implementing solutions that will enable greater collaboration among physician and specialists and offering the option for remote patient consultations.  Within Cisco's Digital Transformation Group, we are mapping specific technologies to all of these capabilities -and many, many more! We're in the process of finalizing full capabilities frameworks and robust industry Points of View and we will be sharing them with the Partner ecosystem soon.

When Denny Trevett and I presented a session at Partner Summit in San Francisco about the "why" and "how" of digital transformation, we shared examples of customer-in win stories, how to engage with ecosystem partners, and rolled out a detailed guide to drive digitization with ecosystem partners. You can view session video here.

Digital transformation is creating unprecedented opportunity for our customers and partners. This all leads to a new way that we need to engage and sell. In Denny's newest blog, he shares the concept of starting with a customer's business challenges and the desired goals in mind, instead of leading with technology and solutions first.

We all know that we can't sell the way we used to. We need to sell in a way that focuses on customer needs first and sets a digital agenda that leads to impactful outcomes that transform. We've seen a lot of success with ourBusiness Outcomes Approach (BOA); a holistic journey that helps us differentiate and win in the marketplace. It helps us identify, prioritize, and execute the pieces, all through a customer lens.

Each customer's digital journey is going to be different. So, as their trusted advisors, we must define, design, and quantify value to deliver and measure differentiated outcomes. By doing this, we will realize true transformation and establish or strengthen customer trust and relationships, which leads to more opportunities.

The key differentiator for Cisco and our partners ishowwe bring this together for customers; and the great news is that this best positions us to own the digital conversation. By connecting Line of Business and IT, along with our robust ecosystem portfolio of partners, as well as continually mapping new technologies to business capabilities, we better enable our customers' digital journeys.

Plan for Success: We encourage you to talk to your Cisco Partner Account Manager to explore how you can differentiate and have the best chance for success with Digital Transformation.

Plus, explore the new Partner Guide to Driving Digital Transformation. Find more information on the Customer-in approach including examples showing real-life win stories, workshops, account analysis tools, info on how to find and connect with ecosystem partners, drive multi-partner deals with Cisco ACES, Marketing ENGAGE and much more.