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Cisco continues to listen to our customers’ feedback, and make improvements that address your biggest pain points. In a previous post, Jim Fuller, Senior Director of Technical Services focused on entitlement, joined us to talk about improvements that simplified the overall Services Entitlement process, and hinted at future improvements that were underway.  Jim’s team recently completed changes to our Return Materials Authorization (RMA) process, and as promised, he returns to the blog to walk us through those changes, and what they will mean for your experience working with Cisco.

jafuller By Guest Contributor Jim Fuller
Installed Base and Contract Data Quality are a consistent challenge for customers. Customers and partners use contract data to manage both their services with Cisco and the information they need to renew service contracts. Cisco wants to make this experience easier for our customers, so we’ve been making improvements to the tools and systems our customers need to maintain their installed base and contract data – starting with our Return Materials Authorization (RMA) process.  Continue reading “The We’re Listening Blog Series: Faster Contract Updates with New RMA Front-end Swap Process”



Authors

Curt Hill

Senior Vice President

Customer Assurance

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At the recent Cisco Live 2013 event in Orlando, I talked about the business value of converging operations technology (OT)—used for industrial automation systems—with IT business networks, in order to create more secure, end-to-end, standard communications and control.  Regarding business value of IT/OT convergence for machine builders/integrators and consequently their manufacturing customers, I referenced a case study involving Comau Group that Al Presher from DesignNews recently picked up in a blog entitled “Connectivity Enabling Smart Manufacturing.”

Automotive welding
Automotive welding

Comau is a leading supplier and partner for most global automakers, integrating welding and assembly lines that coordinate dozens of robots and ancillary automation across multiple stations.

The order-to-engineering sign-off cycle requires months and the consequent build and commissioning to full production adds many more months for a new or refreshed manufacturing line.

Multiple fieldbus protocols at the device level complicate both design and implementation, requiring more integration services—time and money—to make the system work.

By designing a converged IT/OT “Connected Machine” solution that utilizes IP-standards-based, off-the-shelf modularity with a network architecture validated for both business and controls topologies, Comau has been able to reduce engineering cycles and cut integration time by more than two-thirds.  Quoting an Engineering Manager from the company, “Installation, commissioning and debugging for 10 stations with 12-15 robots takes a couple days, rather than 1-2 weeks.” Continue reading “Converge OT with IT for Business Benefits in Manufacturing”



Authors

Chet Namboodri

Senior Director

Global Private Sector Industries Marketing

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Mobility extends beyond devices. Yet, having the right devices and choice of devices allows us to work the way we’d like. In fact, Cisco is one of the world’s largest enterprise users of Apple products. Employees have purchased 33,000 iPhones and 16,000 iPads as part of Cisco’s BYOD program, and almost half of our regular employees are using Macs.

Recently Cisco’s Sheila Jordan, Senior Vice President of Communication and Collaboration IT spoke with Apple about BYOD, as part of Apple’s Tech Talk series. Here she and Brett Belding, Senior Manager, Cisco IT, discussed what’s behind Apple’s popularity at Cisco. They also address what enterprises like Cisco can emulate  what Apple has created for consumers in terms of user experience and bring that into today’s mobile enterprise.

Check out Sheila’s blog “Partnering with Apple on BYOD and Great User Experience” where she discusses the Apple Tech Talk and Cisco’s mobile and collaboration strategy.



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I recently had the opportunity to be interviewed by Apple for its Tech Talk series, taped at Apple’s Palo Alto retail store, on the topic of BYOD.

What prompted the invitation to speak was Cisco’s substantial use of Apple devices – Cisco is one of the largest enterprise users of Apple products today across the world. This is not just iPhones (33,000) and iPads (16,000) which are purchased by employees themselves as part of our BYOD program, but we also deploy nearly 33,000 Macs – almost half of our regular employees select Macs over PCs (these are company provided). Moreover, all of these figures are growing – and have grown significantly over the last three years.

Continue reading “Partnering with Apple on BYOD and Great User Experience”



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Imagine a customer calling their insurance provider and reaching a representative that has never spoken with them and is unfamiliar with the customer’s claims history or company policies. That doesn’t sound like a good experience. Now imagine after a quick verification from the customer, the same representative is able to access the customer’s complete insurance profile, detailing coverage history and other necessary information needed to forward their inquiry to the proper agent or broker. The latter experience is now a reality, made possible by connecting data sources across the Cisco enabled network. By bringing together data, it allows insurers to get a full picture of their customers and allows them to create a differentiated customer experience, helping increase customer satisfaction, retention, loyalty, and referrals.

Call Center

Insurers are continually looking for the best way to attract and retain customers while also increasing cross-sell opportunities. By employing data mining coupled with collaboration technology, insurers are changing the way transactions are conducted. Many insurers are using technology to their benefit; not only through offering differentiated services or channel choices to customers, but also by the information gathered from customers. Continue reading “Understanding Today’s Customer: How Data Mining Can Help Insurers Increase Customer Satisfaction”



Authors

Jeff Tumpowsky

Senior Advisor - Insurance

Americas Business Transformation

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Starting tomorrow, hundreds of Cisco Networking Academy instructors from the United States and Canada will travel to San Jose, California for the 2013 Academy Conference.

Networking Academy instructors prepare people to design, build, maintain, and secure computer networks. Demand for these skills is growing as more and more industries – from healthcare to entertainment to education – are relying on computer networks to do business.

In the United States, jobs in computer systems design and related services are projected to grow 45 percent between 2008 and 2018. And Canada will need 106,000 new information and communications technology (ICT) workers over the next 5 years, according to the Information and Communications Technology Council, which began partnering with Cisco to deliver the Networking Academy curricula in Canada in 1998.

Nearly 4200 instructors teach the Cisco Networking Academy curricula at 2120 high schools, community colleges, universities, military bases, and other community-based organizations in the United States and Canada. They help open doors for people like Kelly Gheesling, who says being part of the Cisco Networking Academy and getting her Cisco CCNA certification was “probably he single best thing I did for my professional career.”

Academy_Conference_Video

“Even though I didn’t really have any experience at all professionally in the field, I had the accreditation that I went through the Cisco Networking Academy, so they said come down, we’d like to interview you face to face,” Kelly said of her interview for a contract position at Ford Motor Company. “Next thing you know I was packing up my stuff and moving down to Columbus [Ohio] for my first job as a network engineer.”

The annual Academy Conference is a chance for instructors to meet one another, learn about updates to the NetAcad curriculum, discover new teaching technologies, tour Cisco demo labs, and more.

Cisco Networking Academy was founded in 1997 and today teaches 1 million students worldwide each year, including 174,000 in the United States and Canada. Networking Academy courses prepare students for entry-level career opportunities, continuing education, and globally recognized Cisco certifications.

Want to teach and inspire with your passion for technology? Learn how you can become a Networking Academy instructor.



Authors

Alexis Raymond

Senior Manager

Chief Sustainability Office

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True Story: The night I arrived in Orlando I was exhausted & hungry.  I headed to a neighboring hotel to meet a colleague for dinner, entered the hotel from a side door, and realized I was lost.  The <REDACTED> hotel and conference center had electronic maps on the walls, but they were poorly done (that’s my story) and it took about 20 minutes to find my way out of the maze. Realizing I had gone in a loop amid abandoned conference rooms was the low point.  As much as I love that potential setup for a horror movie (She thought she’d visit a friend, but never suspected the grave danger that lurked in that funhouse of hallways in “The Beige Lands of Doom”.  Don’t open Hall A!) I was grumpy by the time I found my friend.  Thankfully, Connected Mobile Experiences could spare people this fate and help them remain pleasant to dine with.  Unfortunatly, it wasn’t there in this scenario and adult beverages were requested by all. Continue reading “Could Connected Mobile Experiences Save You From Starring In A Horror Movie?”



Authors

Lauren Friedman

Marketing Manager

Enterprise Networks

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If you were one of the more than 20,000 people who attended Cisco Live Orlando in person or one of the 250,000 who joined us online, you were able to see amazing examples of new ways the Internet of Everything (IoE) is connecting people, process, data, and things. People have asked me how long before they can see the value of IoE in action. Let me be clear: The Internet of Everything is not the Internet of tomorrow, it’s the Internet of today. Our most recent research shows that $1.2 trillion of value is “up for grabs” in calendar year 2013 alone.
Continue reading “The Internet of Everything is the Internet of Today”



Authors

Jim Grubb

Chief Technology Evangelist

Cisco Customer Experience Center

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Social Media SharingYou already have subject matter expertise.  It is time to share that knowledge with others through social media.  There are many social networks, many rules, many experts and a lot of information to digest.  Beyond the basics of each platform, here is some practical advice to get started:

Be careful with posts

Take heed to best practices for sharing for the various social platforms.  Whether you’re posting to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram or Pinterest, make sure to follow the norms for that network.  Some updates may work well for your audience on Twitter, but may fizzle quickly on Facebook.

Try not to cross-post the same update to different social networks.  Do post content in different ways.  For a newly published blog article, post an image with the link on Facebook; pose a question from the article on Twitter; use a different image for sharing on Instagram or Pinterest.  Each post then links back to the original post, but is shared in different ways.

Always schedule

When posting to brand channels, schedule posts for the future—even if the future is only 5 minutes from now.  This will allow you to check the post for grammatical errors and typos, as well as verify that any links work correctly before the update goes live.

Continue reading “Practical Social Media Advice for Newbies”