Cisco Capital, Ingram Micro Team on SMB Lease Financing

Cisco Capital will be simplifying lease financing for small and midsize businesses through a joint financing program offered with distributor Ingram Micro.

The program will allow VARs to access the financing for end users directly from Ingram Micro at the same time they purchase product. The distributor has dedicated a small team to work with partners on gaining credit approval, obtaining lease quotes and completing leasing documentation.

Through the Cisco Express Leasing program, nearly 3,000 Cisco-certified Ingram Micro channel partners will have access to Cisco Capital’s leasing program. Only about 500 of those currently use Cisco leasing programs now, according to Maryann Von Seggern, director of worldwide channel development for Cisco Capital. She said she hopes to see that number climb to half of those who are eligible for the program.

“What we are launching with Ingram is going to allow the end-user deals to scale to the entire channel,” Von Seggern said. “Ingram deals with 3,000 Cisco resellers. Cisco Capital alone couldn’t get to all those resellers.”

Cisco is in talks with its other distributors including Comstor, Tech Data and D&H about offering a similar program.

Cisco plans a channel program for MSPs. Click here to read more.

Cisco Capital and Ingram Micro are planning an “expansive” marketing campaign for January to promote the effort, Von Seggern said. The two companies have been piloting the program ahead of the launch and have already closed five deals.

Von Seggern said the deals will typically be for transactions of $250,000 and under.

In addition, Cisco Capital is doubling to $100,000 the amount eligible for approval through its Easy Lease Update announced in October. The program automated the approval process, decreasing the time for approval from a couple of days to a couple of minutes, Von Seggern said. The new level will be available in January.

Through the program, Cisco-certified Ingram Micro channel partners can also work directly with the distributor’s financing team to take advantage of Cisco Capital’s zero-percent progress payments promotion, now extended through July 28, 2007. It is designed to reduce channel partner out-of-pocket expenses during Cisco Unified Communication deployments.

Scheduled payments are made to the channel partner at mutually agreed upon project milestones, but the customer doesn’t begin making lease payments until the deployment is completed.