Those of you who have been to Cisco Live know what an incredible, near-overwhelming experience it is.  Cisco Live is such a big event that there’s simply too much going on for any one person to take it all in.  Against such a busy backdrop it can be hard for a product family to stand out, and yet that’s exactly what Customer Collaboration accomplished at this year’s show.

Customer Collaboration enjoyed prime real estate in the main Cisco booth at the World of Solutions, where we showcased core customer care products like Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise and Express, along with innovative offerings such as Cisco Finesse (our Web 2.0 agent workspace), Cisco SocialMiner (delivering proactive, social media customer care), and Cisco MediaSense (our network-based recording platform).  A common reaction Read More »

Tags: Cisco Customer Collaboration, cisco live, Cisco Live 2012 San Diego, collaboration, contact center, socialminer

Recent numbers from Gartner suggest that by 2016, enterprise public cloud services spending will reach $207 billion, up from $109 billion in 2012.  Additionally, according to IDG’s Unified Communications and Collaboration survey, 90% of organizations plan to invest in new or upgraded unified communications and collaboration technology in the next 12 months.

It’s clear that businesses see a lot of opportunity in the cloud and collaboration, but how exactly can it help your business? At Cisco, we see four main ways that organizations can benefit from services that provide collaboration in the cloud, such as those offered with the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution:

You Can Create Unified User Experiences: Cloud-based collaboration solutions deliver a consistent experience across all devices – something important with the increasingly expanding array of devices used for work. This means, that someone using a smartphone from their car will be having the same WebEx meeting experience as the person joining from their desktop computer in a cubicle and the lucky coworker that is dialing in from their tablet at a sunny outdoor café. The application will look and feel the same so there isn’t a learning curve to use it on a different device and you can be assured that there won’t be any difference in the features and functionalities between users as well. 

You Can Optimize Resources: One of the many ways that collaboration delivers value is through operational ROI that allows organizations to avoid unnecessary costs and improve processes, but the resource gains from cloud collaboration go well beyond fiscal benefits.  Since the cloud can unify and automate operations across employees and offices, it allows IT and business executives to refocus their energy and investments less on operational issues and more on strategic priorities ultimately leading to business transformation.   Read More »

Tags: cloud, cloud_computing

Many in the media have observed that this year’s Enterprise 2.0 conference represented an inflection point in the industry. There is growing interest in how organizations can move beyond stand-alone community sites and leverage social collaboration to “get work done” within business processes. We see the same trend. Discussions Cisco had with attendees, as well as discussions heard during many of the conference sessions, have shifted from a debate about tools to a transformational conversation regarding social business. The transition from a technological focus to one that examines business value requires leadership teams to act more strategically to avoid social silos.

At the June Boston event, I had the opportunity to participate in a panel session,”Integrating Unified Communications and Social Business“, that addressed a critical foundation of this new conversation. Moderated by Irwin Lazar, VP and service director, at Nemertes, the panel examined how social collaboration and unified communications can be integrated into a seamless experience to “get work done”; how companies can best address business and IT management issues; and what organizational changes need to be considered to solidify planning around all forms of collaboration. The clear message coming out of the panel discussion was that “social + UC” is a market convergence trend that will change how organizations examine current and future enterprise collaboration platforms. We agree. Cisco WebEx Social has been designed from the ground-up to include instant messaging, presence, voice, video, and conferencing as core platform capabilities. Below are other highlights and reflections from the panel discussion: Read More »

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, unified communications, WebEx Social

As we continue our march to #1 worldwide market share in contact center, guidance and input from the analyst community, partner ecosystem and valued customers is critical. The last few months marked three important Customer Collaboration events for Cisco, which helped validate our messaging and execution plan, as well as educate these key audiences on our solution portfolio.

The Cisco Customer Collaboration Partner Sales Summit was Read More »

Tags: Cisco Customer Collaboration, collaboration, contact center, Forrester Research, Gartner, IDC

Increasing how well organizations collaborate is the business opportunity of the decade. But there is one toxic mindset that can inhibit collaboration’s potential: many individuals confuse collaboration with consensus.  Consensus is what makes everyone happy; collaboration is about achieving the best outcome.

As business leaders, it’s vital to recognize that consensus is the enemy of collaboration. Sometimes when we say collaboration, people believe it’s an opportunity to hold hands and sing “kumbaya” around the office campfire. I was deeply inspired by Morten Hansen’s book, Collaboration, in which Hansen stated so brilliantly: Read More »

Tags: collaboration, Culture Change, Morten Hansen, The Collaboration Imperative