Partnering for Purpose

Partnering for Purpose is a global Cisco initiative that enables our partners, customers, and suppliers to collaborate more effectively with us to drive positive impact, and together deliver on our commitment to an inclusive future (for all).

Since its launch at Partner Summit in November 2022, the Partnering for Purpose initiative has grown and gained momentum, bringing Cisco and our partners together—sharing best practices, impactful stories, and collaborating in innovative ways to drive positive impact.

We have seen engagements big and small that all help to deliver on our shared Purpose, including:

• Extending the reach and scale of the literacy support we are able to offer to primary school children in the United Kingdom. In collaboration with (in)valuable UKI partners World Wide Technology (WWT), CGI, Stone Group, Computacenter, Virgin Media 02, and TCS, we have been able to amplify our impact by over 62% in the 2023/2024 academic year, delivering over 340 hours of reading support to children most in need through the Chapter One one-on-one reading support program.
• Collaborating with some of our gold-tier partners in the Netherlands, including Avit and Simac, to increase our impact and reach in driving cyber awareness and resilience amongst 8- to 12-year-olds in schools in the Netherlands, and by implication helping to drive employee engagement within these companies.
• Collaborating with partner distribution in our Asia-Pacific and Japan region, we have integrated purpose-related elements into the onboarding learning and enablement journeys of new Cisco security partners, bringing learning and driving positive impact into close alignment.
• Giving back together can be a powerful connector. Cisco and our partner community across the United States, Canada and Latin America regularly engage in weeklong giveback activities that range from supporting food banks to assisting local hospitals. Over the past two years these efforts have involved over 200 partner employees and over 450 Cisco employees, collectively contributing more than 2130 volunteer hours and incalculable impact.

The Partnering for Purpose initiative exemplifies the relationship between purpose and business value, and we continue to seek alignment with our partners around the world in the ways that they show up and help to drive innovation. So once again, and for the second year in a row, the Global Cisco Partner Innovation Challenge included the Partnering for Purpose category, which awards innovative submissions with a purpose-driven objective. Driving high levels of partner engagement, the category accounted for 87% of the 2024 submissions, underscoring our partners’ dedication to innovations that aim to create positive impact on the world.

We are excited about the opportunity for continued growth and expansion and will continue to document best practice for ease of sharing excellent ideas to help drive positive change and share stories to help inspire to greater collaboration and action.