Discover Meraki-as-a-Service
Chapter One: Playbook Overview
This playbook is designed to help Cisco Meraki partners successfully and profitably develop a managed services practice within their business. This includes creating Meraki cloud-managed IT-as-a-service solutions without the infrastructure buildout required by traditional on-premise management platforms.
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Recommended Action
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Owner
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Date
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1
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Understand the managed services market opportunity and how it applies to your business
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Exec Sponsor
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2
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Given your existing capabilities, evaluate and determine the managed service business model that you will pursue
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Exec Sponsor
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3
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Utilizing the Qualification and Readiness Assessment and other available information, determine your business readiness and priority for this initiative
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Exec Sponsor and Meraki CAM
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Chapter Two: Securing Executive Commitment
Provide specific requirements for establishing executive and functional leadership sponsorship, as well as initiative accountability when launching a Meraki managed services practice.
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Recommended Action
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Owner
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Date
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1
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Affirm your executive commitment and assign an executive sponsor with the full authority to develop Meraki managed service capabilities and offerings
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Exec Team
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2
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Secure your extended leadership team support and commitment
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Exec Sponsor
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3
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Establish the working team that will develop and execute on the managed services practice development action plan and the recommendations in this playbook
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Leadership Team
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Develop Services: Planning
Chapter Three: Business and Financial Planning
Establish your managed service business plan and key financial objectives by modeling your anticipated financial performance and required investments.
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Recommended Action
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Owner
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Date
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1
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Formulate your managed services vision and mission statements. These can be captured below in Table 4.
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Exec Team
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2
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Utilize Table 3 to determine the Meraki managed services business model that will be most appropriate for your business.
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Managed Services Leader
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3
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Analyze your installed base of customers to understand their pain points, your managed services opportunity, and the likely service requirements of your customers.
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Marketing Leadership
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4
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Perform a SWOT analysis to identify opportunities to establish competitive differentiation.
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Marketing Leadership or Managed Services Leader
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5
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Use Table 5 below to establish your UVPs for target customers, business partners (like Meraki), and internal stakeholders.
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Marketing Leadership
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6
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Utilize the Meraki Business Case Generator tool, model your anticipated financial performance for managed services, and define your financial objectives. Use Table 6 below to capture these objectives.
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Executive Team
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7
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Develop a Managed Services Business Plan that outlines your financial and development objectives, tasks, activities, and timelines.
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Managed Services Manager
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8
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Establish practice-level, leadership, and individual MBOs / OKRs to drive performance and accountability for execution.
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Leadership Team
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Develop Services: Creation
Chapter Four: Meraki Agile Service Creation
Accelerate your time to revenue when developing new Meraki managed services.
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Recommended Action
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Owner
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Date
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1
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Drawing upon your market and installed base research, segment customers to identify differentiated managed service requirements.
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Managed Services Leader or Product Manager
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2
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Based on your analysis, use Table 7 to identify 3 candidate managed services, outline the segment requirements, and quantify strategic value and priority.
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Managed Services Leader or Product Manager
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3
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Facilitate a Managed Service Discovery Workshop to vet the potential managed services and determine which to advance and begin to outline the managed service framework.
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Managed Services Leader or Product Manager
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4
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Use Table 8 to develop a New Managed Service Idea Presentation to capture high-level service details to vet with prospective buyers and take forward for a concept commit.
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Managed Services Leader or Product Manager
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5
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Engage target buyers, through digital marketing, surveys, or focus groups, to validate the high-level managed service concept.
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Managed Services Leader or Product Manager
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6
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Confirm internal concept commit to ensure the resource allocation and investment required to develop your new managed service.
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Managed Services Leader or Product Manager
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7
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Using the agenda in Exhibit 1 and the Managed Service Development Template in Table 9, facilitate a Managed Service Creation Workshop to develop your new managed service elements in detail.
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Managed Services Leader or Product Manager
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8
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Evaluate opportunities to package or bundle your new managed service with other offers. Define the specific requirements of doing so.
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Managed Services Leader or Product Manager
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9
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Based on the managed service requirements defined and the unique value offered, determine pricing for your new managed service.
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Managed Services Leader or Product Manager
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10
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Based on updated managed service constructs, investment requirements, and pricing, download the Meraki Business Case Generator (or other financial modeling tools) to update, finalize, and obtain agreement on the business case.
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Managed Services Leader or Product Manager
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11
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Where possible, validate the offering one final time with your prospective buyers through digital marketing.
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Managed Services Leader or Product Manager
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12
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Develop an MSD outlining the features of the new managed service.
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Managed Services Leader or Product Manager
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Chapter Five: The Managed Service Product Development Engine - Developing Your New Managed Services
It’s important to understand the parallel and agile workstreams which must occur to develop your new services and ensure market readiness: product development, service delivery readiness, marketing readiness, and sales operations readiness.
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Recommended Action
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Owner
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Date
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1
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Define your requirements for both NOC and service desk.
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Managed Services Leader or Product Manager
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2
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Evaluate your NOC and service desk requirements and determine the most appropriate strategy to deliver NOC and service desk capabilities.
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Delivery Leader or Business Operations Leader
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3
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Based on your new managed service delivery requirements, define the platform requirements for provisioning, managing, maintaining, and billing.
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Managed Services Leader or Product Manager
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4
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Based on your platform requirements, identify, procure, and configure the platforms required for provisioning, managing, maintaining, and billing for the new managed services.
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Delivery Leader or Business Operations Leader
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5
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Create and configure the Meraki MSP dashboard.
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Delivery Leader
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6
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Establish integration between your new platforms and your existing OSS/BSS/PSA platforms to ensure seamless hand-offs, delivery, and visibility.
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Delivery Leader
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7
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Define your new managed services ordering processes and ensure the business rules are established in your OSS/BSS/PSA platforms.
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Business Operations Leader
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8
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Establish a lab environment that can validate your services before launch and can be used for replicating customer problems and troubleshooting.
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Delivery Leader
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9
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Define your customer onboarding process and methodologies.
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Delivery Leader
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10
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Define your rules of engagement to transition customers from onboarding to live.
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Delivery Leader
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11
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Define and execute your new managed service marketing plan, including required collateral.
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Marketing Leader
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12
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Determine your sales routes to market for each target customer segment and/or buyer persona.
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Sales Leader
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13
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Use Table 13 to develop and execute a sales readiness plan for each route to market.
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Sales Leader
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Deliver Your Meraki Service
Chapter Six: Taking Your New Managed Services to Market
At the conclusion of this chapter, you should be able to develop and execute your go-to-market (GTM) plan to launch your new managed services, beginning with a pilot or controlled launch.
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Recommended Action
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Owner
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Date
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1
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Develop the GTM plan for your new managed services.
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Managed Services Leader
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2
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Assess sales readiness relative to the skills and capacity required to take your new managed services to market.
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Sales Leader
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3
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Develop and execute a sales enablement plan to ensure your sales organization understands and can position the value, capabilities, and features of your new managed service, including the sale motions, customer onboarding, and service delivery.
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Sales Leader
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4
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Establish sales KPIs / OKRs that are aligned to your GTM plan and your overarching managed service business plan.
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Sales Leader
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5
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Evaluate sales compensation to ensure it aligns to your managed service business plan, will drive accountability for sales execution, and will reward sales for superior performance.
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Sales Leader
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6
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Using Table 14, establish a structured pilot that will validate your new managed services capabilities.
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Managed Services Leader
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7
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Execute your structured pilot and address gaps identified.
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Managed Services Leader
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8
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Based on the success of the pilot, develop customer use cases and testimonials that can be used in your launch.
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Managed Services Leader
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9
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Identify initial phase 1 target customers in preparation for launch.
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Sales Leader
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10
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Launch your new Meraki managed services offering(s).
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Managed Services Leader
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