But what the company found – and what ultimately spurred its interest in VARCompliance – is that even when partners were implementing the most VIP-rich solutions, dollars, and especially those stemming from back-end rebates, were still being left on the table in the post-sales phase.

"What we found is that even though [partners] take into consideration Cisco VIP or other programs or promotions, mostly, they are assuming that just because they did that in pre-sales that they are actually going to recoup the benefit in the backend," Bareket said. "What we found is that's not necessarily the case."

That's because some Cisco partners aren't as diligent about the "operationalize-to-profit" process, ensuring that they complete all necessary steps to qualify the rebates and then get paid, Bareket said.

He said there are several reasons for VIP rebates not being recorded as earned, such as the partner not registering the deal appropriately with Cisco, transactions simply "falling through the cracks," system errors, or a lack of correlation between deals that go direct and those that go through distribution.

This, Bareket said, is where its PartnerCentral platform comes into play. The Software-as-a-Service offering helps solution providers keep closer tabs on deals they've registered and reward dollars they've earned. It also lets them compare their rewards forecasts – or how much they expect to get in rebates from Cisco based on existing deals and orders – to what they are actually receiving from Cisco.

In other words, it helps Cisco partners verify that their VIP payouts are, in actuality, correlating with everything they've sold.

According to Bareket, it's a process that works. At the close last month of VIP23 – the twenty-third iteration of the 6-month VIP program since its inception in 2002 -- Bareket said PartnerCentral helped Cisco partners identify "tens of millions" of VIP dollars they would have otherwise missed because of an oversight on either their part or Cisco's.

John Bristol, practice director at Trace 3, an Irvine, Calif.-based solution provider and Cisco Gold partner, said it's this ability to cross check VIP payouts that really makes PartnerCentral such a valuable tool.

"Partners take Cisco's word for things, so when Cisco pays you a rebate, you just kind of say 'thank you Cisco, we trust you.' And to verify and validate that your VIP payout is accurate to everything you've sold is an extremely time consuming task, especially if you are doing the volumes that we are doing with Cisco," Bristol said. "So what [PartnerCentral] does is check every deal that we have done, validate that deal for VIP payout, and then will correlate that to what we are actually getting paid, and it will give you that delta."

Bristol said Trace 3 also leverages the Netformx platform to design Cisco solutions, create bill of materials, and to gain more insight into its relationship with Cisco by tracking items such as when its certifications need to be updated.

"It's integrated with a lot of the Cisco [partner] portal tools," Bristol said. "You can get a pretty good picture of what your overall financial outlook is, you can track certifications, your VIP payout, and it's all almost at a BI level that really gives you a grasp of the relationship."

Bareket said the PartnerCentral platform is quickly gaining recognition in the Cisco channel. When Netformx acquired the software from VARcompliance, it was being used by 100 Cisco-certified partner employees. Over the past 14 months, that number has grown to 1,700, Bareket said.