gCORPORATE STRATEGIES

By R.R. Lynch

RATE STRATEGIESCORPOR

Connecting with Diversity

Gunter, III

As Cisco celebrates 30 years of changing the way the world works, lives, plays, and learns, it attributes its edge not simply to technology, but also to its people who help to “connect the unconnected.”

Cisco, the wor ld leader in technology for connecting everything—people, processes, data, and things—is equally known for its commit-ment to diversity in the workplace and the com-munities in which it does business through its supplier diversity business program. This program was estab-lished in 2000 and is now known as the Diversity Business Practices (DBP) organization.

The DBP organization, named for the competitive advantage partner and supplier diversity brings to Cisco business functions and its customers, leads the charge in fostering strategic relationships between Cisco partners, suppliers, and customers.

“We see our partner diversity ini-tiative as a game changer in supplier diversity because Cisco is uniquely fit-ted for this as a business-to-business

company. We get to solve our customers’ challenges with leading edge tech-nology, help increase their Tier 1 diversity spend, and grow and develop diverse-owned businesses at the same time. In ad-dition, our program is relevant to Cisco’s core business and has a poten-

tial effect to overall revenue. This is our true competitive advantage,” says Madison Gunter, III, manager, Cisco Diversity Business Practices.

In addition to supporting a diverse supply chain, both direct and indirect, the true competitive advantage that Cisco has with its customers is with its certified diverse-owned channel part-ners program. Through this program, these partners are connected with customers who want Cisco products and also have supplier diversity spend

More About Cisco Diversity Business Practices✓ Key programs: Executive Mentor Protégé Program, Partner Oper ations

Diversity Forums

✓ Key partnerships/memberships: Women’s Business Enterprise National Council, National Minority Supplier Development Council, WE Connect Internation-al, U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Conference Board, National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.

goals/programs. Cisco customers win big by purchasing Cisco products directly from its diverse-owned part-ners, which allows them significant Tier 1 diversity spend. Many of Cisco’s foundational customers have benefited from this program, includ-ing the Coca-Cola Company and Chevron.

To further the growth of its re-lationships with its diverse channel partners and being in alignment with Cisco’s business priorities, the DBP organization hosts two diverse partner forums annually to con-nect Cisco diverse partners to its customers to enhance or find new opportunities. Cisco executives also participate to share with and gather focused information from its partner community and customers and how together we can maximize growth by collaborating. The Partner Operations Diversity Forums are held during two national industry conferences: the National Minority Supplier Devel-opment Council (NMSDC) Annual Conference and Business Opportu-nity Fair and the U.S. Department of Commerce Minority Business Development Agency’s National Minority Enterprise Development (MED) Week.

Nearly half of Cisco-certified diverse-owned channel partners are women-owned business enter-

prises (WBEs). Benefiting directly from both Cisco’s technology and its commitment to diversity is SHIInter national Corp., the largest mi-nority- and woman-owned business enterprise (MWBE) in the United States. This organically grown and privately held company has grown from a million-dollar regional seller of software to a multibillion-dollar global provider of IT products and services.

L ed by Thai Lee, p re s iden t and CEO s ince the year it was established, SHI is re-p o r t e d l y one of the top 10 pri-

vately held firms in the IT field in the United States. SHI’s growth was not facilitated through acquisitions and mergers, but through organic and strategic growth and key partnerships

and, of course, focused leadership.“Our longtime salespeople are

trusted partners free to act in the best interest of our customers— our only stakeholders. Rather than ‘targeting’ clients, we listen to them and reinvest in new service offerings, tools, and ex-pertise that use IT solutions to advance their business goals. In the end, that is what matters most to us,” Lee says.SHI has been a Cisco partner for approximately 10 years and achieved Cisco Gold Certification in 2012 after meeting rigorous standards for networking competency, service, sup-port, and customer satisfaction. Cisco Gold Certification provides SHI International with access to compre-hensive sales, technical, and lifecycle services training and support available from Cisco. As a Cisco Gold partner, SHI is now able to design, build, and support comprehensive and con-nected solutions in three key Cisco areas: Cisco Borderless Networks Architectures, Cisco Collaboration Architectures, and Cisco Data Center Architectures.

Lee

With more than 20 locations in the United States and multiple locations in Canada, France, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom, SHI offers custom IT solutions for software and hardware procure-ment, deployment planning, con-figuration, data center optimization, IT asset management, and cloud computing.

For more information about SHI, visit www.shi.com. ◆

R.R. Lynch is chief advisor at R2L

& Company LLC, minority- and wom-

an-owned busi-

ness consulting

fi rm that special-

izes in Business

Opt imizat ion

Service Solutions

(B.O.S.S.) for all

business indus-

tries. Lynch has

earned advanced certifi cations from the

Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth Col-

lege, the Edward Lowe Foundation and

the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Reprinted with permission from the May/June 2015 issue of Minority Business Entrepreneur

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Connecting with Diversity (con tin ued)