There is not another way to start the application, the manage item more or less prevents the user from disallowing it to open and it really has nothing to do with how the application launches. I suggest reaching out to Cisco, even if their support is usually garbage they are the source of truth for anything involving their applications.
You could look in to modifying the launch agent plist and updating the command/path used to execute any connect. However, what commands and switches would be needed to achieve what you are looking for would need to be provided by Cisco. Additionally if you use a custom .plist, it will be replaced with every any connect update and need to be reset to your preference.