Cisco solutions let you focus on your business-not the network
Succeeding in a Changing Business Climate
In today's rapidly changing marketplace, small businesses are facing new challenges and competitive pressures. Chances are your employees are having to accomplish more with fewer resources. They are also becoming more mobile, and must be able to communicate with colleagues, customers, and business partners whether they are working in the office, at home, or on the road. Customers are more demanding than ever, so you need to keep business processes running smoothly and deliver responsive service to stand apart from the competition. And as always, budgets are tight, and keeping your operating costs under control remains a top priority.
As you look for the right vendor to build the solution you need, you want not only the latest technology, but also peace of mind in knowing that the network will support your key business operations. To design and deploy the solution, you’ll need a trusted vendor who understands your business needs. Your solution should provide solid network security to protect your business communications and data from hackers and viruses. It should be reliable to keep your most important business processes running at their best. And as your business grows, the solution will also need to be flexible and scalable to meet future business needs.
Cisco Small and Medium-Sized Business Solutions Deliver Peace of Mind
Built for growing business like yours, Cisco small and medium-sized business solutions deliver the security and dependability you need today, with plenty of room to grow as your needs evolve. Delivered by Cisco Certified Partners, Cisco small and medium-sized business solutions free you to focus on your business-not technology.
Start with a Partner Who Understands Your Business
As you turn to the network to power your key business processes, you need a trusted adviser who can help you build a solution that delivers the performance and services you require, and who is dependable, flexible, and cost-effective. Whether you’re looking for an integrated networking solutions provider or a highly specialized solutions provider, you’ll find that trusted adviser in a Cisco Certified Partner.
Cisco Certified Partners are highly trained and skilled in a variety of technologies-from routers and switches to unified communications, security, and wireless networking. You can choose a Cisco Certified Partner that will help you with any or all phases of building and operating your network-from planning, preparing, and designing your network to installing, supporting, and optimizing it.
Cisco partners continually invest in training, keeping up to date on emerging products and technologies, so you can be sure your network takes advantage of the latest developments in the industry. If you don’t have the time or the technical staff to manage your network, your partner can also manage your solution for you-24 hours a day.
Customer satisfaction is a top priority for Cisco partners, and the company consistently wins industry awards, such as the VARBusiness 5-Star Partner Program, year after year. Cisco independently audits each partner’s customer satisfaction surveys to help ensure uniform standards of excellence across the global partner community.
Safeguard Your Business Assets
Security is more important than ever in today’s business world. Your network keeps employees in touch with colleagues and customers, gives them access to key tools and applications, and houses sensitive company and customer data. Even one security breach can shut down your operations for days, or allow a hacker to steal vital business data.
To safeguard your important assets, you need to protect the network against common threats like viruses, spyware, and malware. These malicious programs can install themselves through email and visits to websites, and can record passwords or troll through files for credit card, bank account, and other sensitive information. Hackers are another threat, as the number of organizations targeted by professional attackers continues to grow.
A Cisco secure network provides built-in, layered security to help you safeguard your organization against these threats. It lets you do business with confidence, and can help you unlock some important business benefits, including:
A trusted environment: Strong security assures customers and regulatory agencies that sensitive information, such as credit card numbers and confidential business details, will not be accessed and exploited. Your business partners will feel more confident sharing data such as sales forecasts or prerelease product plans.
Singapore’s Geek Terminal is a high-tech business lounge optimized for business executives and travelers who wish to conduct their business dealings as well as get their work done in comfort. To keep its IT-savvy business customers satisfied, network security was essential.
"Cisco was chosen over the other vendors because they offered the best security compared to the rest. Cisco’s technology is proven to be reliable and
secure – that sealed the deal."
- Christopher Lee, CEO, Geek Terminal.
Mobility: Robust network security lets your employees safely access your network from the road or from home without introducing viruses or other threats. Employees can use critical information when they need it, making them more productive when they are away from their desks.
Improved productivity: An effective network security program can boost productivity across your organization. Employees spend less time on nonproductive tasks like sifting through spam or dealing with viruses. Your network and your Internet connection remain safe, helping ensure that you and your employees have regular access to the Internet and email.
Reduced costs: Network downtime is costly for any business. By ensuring that your network and your Internet connection are safely up and running, you can avoid expensive network disruptions, and have peace of mind in knowing that your customers can reach you when they need to.
"Before we start proposing random technology that we think is going to improve a customer's business processes, we like to find out what they really
think of us as people, build a nice relationship. Once we get past that, our customers can trust that we were making the right solution and the right
choice for their business needs."
- Jason Goldberg, Director of Engineering at iTech, Cisco Certified Partner
Skilled Services to Fit Your Business
To tap the full potential of your network investment, you need the right type and level of service for your business. Cisco partners can deliver innovative service solutions that combine networkwide technical support with ongoing network monitoring and proactive maintenance. These solutions are based on the unique Cisco Lifecycle approach to service, which defines key activities at every phase of the network lifecycle-from designing and planning your network to deploying the system and keeping it healthy during day-to-day operations.
Customized to support your business, Cisco services enable you to:
- Reduce ownership costs: Cisco Certified Partners can regularly check on the health, availability, security, and performance of your network to spot potential issues before they cause problems. They help ensure that all of your Cisco devices are correctly configured, according to Cisco best practices, for worry-free network operation, to minimize costly network outages.
- Keep your network up and running: Through a secure web portal, you can view the status of your overall network health, security, and voice performance anywhere, at any time. Your Cisco partner can maintain an up-to-date picture of each device in your network to provide you with status reports and identify and solve potential problems.
- Meet changing business needs: Even after the network is installed and working correctly, your partner, using the Cisco Lifecycle Services approach, can help you optimize your solution with ongoing improvements as your business changes and evolves.
- Help employees stay productive: A trouble-free network will enable your employees to consistently reach the people and information they need more quickly, so they can save time, serve customers more efficiently, and be more productive.
"I've worked with Cisco now for over seven years, and the reliability of the system is stunning. There’s nothing worse than having a lot of down time,
and the Cisco solution provides certainty and reliability."
- Paul Atkinson, Director of Resources, Community Gateway, Preston, Lancashire, England.
"It would be a big shame if you implemented such great technology and then just walked away and left it. So on an ongoing basis, we actually provide
our customers with line support for their voice and data networks. If they do have a particular business requirement, we can make sure the technology
can help them deliver that and work with that."
- Jo Berry, Sales Director for CNT Limited, Cisco Certified Partner
"We used a hosted service to actually reduce the cost of having to maintain the Cisco solution ourselves. We don’t have a dedicated IT department, so
hosting by our Cisco partner was a sensible solution."
- Sean Booth, owner of Parkway Volkswagen, Derby
Solutions That Grow with Your Business
Cisco offers a variety of solutions designed to meet the challenges that small and medium-sized businesses face today. Each solution is designed to give you the right mix of communications, productivity, and business applications, in a complete solution that is easy to set up and use.
Connect Your Employees and Offices: Cisco can help your company connect and collaborate better, empowering your entire staff to work together more easily and make decisions faster. You can use a single network for all data, voice, and wireless communications to ease network management and reduce costs. And you can give everyone in your business secure access to the people and information they need, even when they’re on the go.
Work from Anywhere: Cisco Small and Medium-Sized Business solutions give your employees the mobility and flexibility to deliver service anytime, anywhere. Whether your employees are working in the office or from home, a hotel, or an Internet café, they can reach the information and resources they need to solve problems and respond to customers.
Serve Customers Better: The more quickly you can respond to a question or return a call, the more satisfied your customers will be. A Cisco solution can give your staff a detailed view of customer information on their phone or PC the instant a customer calls. And it can make your employees easier for customers to reach-regardless of where they are working or how they are communicating.
Be More Productive: Cisco solutions can enable your staff to accomplish more with less and work more efficiently. Network tools such as instant messaging, wireless networking, and point-and-click teleconferencing help employees collaborate and reach the right people from anywhere.
Working with the Cisco Smart Business Roadmap and your Cisco partner, you’ll create a structured, prioritized technology plan to closely align your business needs with a solution that’s right for you. The Cisco Smart Business Roadmap helps you meet today’s business challenges now and gives you confidence that your investment will support new needs in the future.
"What became immediately apparent to me was that Cisco Partner Unis Lumin was the only company that understood and immediately grasped our four core
values. The other thing that became immediately apparent to me was that Unis Lumin was in this for the long haul. They understood the journey that we
were about to go on, and were comfortable and wanted to be a part of that journey with us for the next 10 to 15 years."
- Dave Reeve, Vice President, Client Services, Nurse Next Door
Why Cisco?
Ultimately, your business isn't about technology-it's about giving your customers the best possible combination of products and service. Cisco understands that technology is about bringing people together, and has designed its small and medium-sized business solutions to let you enjoy smooth, worry-free networking day after day.
Cisco Certified Partners understand your business needs and work closely with you to build a solution that works the way your business does. A Cisco secure network helps keep confidential business information safe and secure from hackers and other threats. And Cisco Lifecycle Services help ensure that your network solution delivers consistent, dependable performance to support your most important business processes.
Only Cisco offers a complete set of solutions for small and medium-sized businesses that deliver the security, reliability, and scalability you need to keep your business thriving. By investing in a Cisco solution that is built for your business, you can transform your company into a more agile, collaborative environment, to meet today's challenges and set the stage for continued success for years to come.
