At Cisco Live 2009 we hosted a series of virtual roundtables with executives, analysts and press around key topics. The goal was to use our collaboration solutions to give remote attendees the ability to engage with our executive team in an interactive online environment.
Posted by Colin Smith at 01:07PM PST
Thinking a bout the possibility of a BART strike, I got to thinking about telecommuting and other flexible work situations. I am a full time telecommuter, as are several of my colleagues. For example, a salesperson must be very flexible, and be able to work in a hotel room, at an airport terminal, sometimes even in the car (not while driving, hopefully). There are many job situations in which workers need or simply want to work remotely, saving travel time and costs, or to be able to meet with the right people at a time that works for them.
Posted by Leanne Schrotzberger at 09:46AM PST
Over the last several years, I’ve watched with interest and excitement as the customer care industry has evolved from traditional, voice-only call centers to multichannel contact centers that utilize phone, e-mail, chat, the web, speech recognition, and video to communicate with callers. Speaking as a consumer, I like that I now have a rich variety of ways to obtain information and resolve issues. At the same time, however, I remain frustrated by the fundamental limitation that customer care is still predominantly provided by the contact center, which is typically only a small part of a business or organization.
Cisco has led the way in expanding the scope of customer care with the introduction of ground-breaking products like Cisco Unified Expert Advisor, which allows presence-enabled experts anywhere in the organization to assist callers. Now, we’re taking another leap forward by applying a wealth of collaboration technologies that will enable businesses and organizations to forge real relationships with their customers and elevate customer care to the next level.
Posted by Doron Aronson at 05:49PM PST
The new Apple iPhone 3G S on the new 3.0 operating system has many features that will be helpful to WebEx users on the iPhone. Here are my top three new features:
Spotlight Search for WebEx meeting invitation
You can now quickly search and find that WebEx invitation whether it be in your email or in your calendar to simply join the meeting on your iPhone.
Posted by Alex Hadden Boyd at 03:43PM PST
A recent feature article on the Cisco website grabbed my attention: “What goes Down Must Come Up: Preparing for Recovery” includes a quote from a Cisco channel partner on their view of how companies are dealing with the recent economic challenges. Ettienne Reinecke, Dimension Data CTO and group executive, cites three types of customers, each distinguished by their reaction to the recession: those focusing almost exclusively on cost cutting, those using the downturn as breathing room for cleaning up projects and those leveraging economic turmoil to drive into new markets.
As I read the interview, it struck me these customer profiles are broadly applicable, in any economic environment. Unified Communications customers have widely divergent requirements and objectives for their deployments. Some customers have basic requirements, and are driven by the need to reduce costs by consolidating resources on a converged network. Other customers are implementing innovative new communications capabilities as part of a strategic plan to drive into new markets and achieve competitive advantage.
And there are customers who are a hybrid. Quantum Chemicals, Ltd., as an example, has a blended profile, simultaneously praising the advantages of 4-digit dialing plans while at the same time deploying more advanced mobility and presence capabilities as part of their strategic plan.
Cisco’s success in Unified Communications is due in part to our ability to span these divergent user requirements, from basic to very strategic communications. Our UC 7.1 system release is a great case in point: for basic telephony users, we introduced a new series of basic telephones, the Cisco IP Phone 6900 Series and Cisco Unified Workspace Licensing Entry Edition for basic voice and messaging applications. For more advanced UC requirements, we introduced Cisco Unified Video Conferencing 7.0 with high definition video processing, the ability to press a single button on a Cisco Unified IP Phone to joining a Cisco WebEx collaboration session, and a new client services framework that allows Cisco’s core enterprise call processing capabilities to be extended to a variety of software clients, including Cisco WebEx Connect and Microsoft Office Communicator.
The Cisco UC portfolio has the breadth and depth to meet the needs of the many faces of the UC customer. The Cisco UC portfolio has the breadth and depth to meet the current and future needs of the many faces of the UC customer. The proof is in the millions of users deploying Cisco solutions in widely varying applications, many of which are detailed here.
Steve Slattery
Vice President, IPCBU at Cisco
Posted by Doron Aronson at 02:24PM PST
At Cisco, we firmly believe that the network enables collaboration—the type of collaboration that is required in today’s business environment where you need to work with people around the world. It’s the network that enables the people to connect, communicate and collaborate using any device.
We are pleased to see that our view of the network-enabled collaboration is shared by industry experts and our customers. As a proof point, last week Cisco won the Best of Interop 2009 for Collaboration. Interestingly, the award wasn’t for the best selling WebEx web meeting applications or for the highly esteemed TelePresence solution. Cisco won for what used to be called the “plumbing.” The winning product is the Cisco WebEx Node for ASR 1000 Series routers, which is a shared port adapter (SPA) that acts as a Point of Presence for the Cisco WebEx Collaboration Cloud, consolidating hundreds of on-network meeting connections for web, video and VoIP, to a single connection from the ASR 1000 to the WebEx Collaboration Cloud.
Posted by Alex Hadden Boyd at 04:43PM PST
Fred Mednick, the founder of Teachers Without Borders, shares an experience to show that no matter what a person does for a living, they have something to teach or share with another individual.
Visit the Pass the Ball site to share and grow your own ideas to make them better.
by LeAnne Schrotzberger, public relations manager, Cisco Corporate Communications
Posted by Leanne Schrotzberger at 09:56AM PST
Watch Tom Wesselman, manager of software development for Cisco Unified Communications, and Tugba Goksel, integrated marketing for Cisco Unified Communications, discuss next generation architectures for collaboration and a few of the exciting trends from this year’s Interop show.
Find out more about the Cisco Collaboration Community
Posted by Leanne Schrotzberger at 03:22PM PST
by Alan Cohen, vice president, Cisco Enterprise Marketing
Posted by Alan Cohen at 09:20AM PST
I love the WebEx conferencing application for the iPhone. It makes my life easier by marketing itself. People download it, demo it to their friends, and bingo - their friends download it too.
There are now over 100,000 WebEx Meeting Center on the iPhone downloads from the AppStore across 62 countries. Also, we are seeing the WebEx App on the iPhone in the most unexpected places. Just last week, a colleague of mine told me that Costco in the Bay Area was selling the “iPhone App Directory” catalog which includes review of over 250 iPhone apps. In the catalog, the WebEx for the iPhone app was features with a 5-star rating – the highest possible rating.
Posted by Alex Hadden Boyd at 07:26AM PST
A new case study from Cisco-on-Cisco describes how WebEx interactive features engaged the company’s global salesforce during training for an important corporate initiative and formed the core of Cisco’s largest virtual training deployment:
Late in 2008, Cisco’s entire global sales organization was asked to embrace a new company-wide operational initiative called the Integrated Selling Process (ISP). For the ISP adoption to be successful, efficient and timely process and system training was required across Cisco’s sales organization, from upper management down, in five global theaters. The ISP project is the largest virtual training deployment in Cisco’s history. In addition to English, the training materials were created in eight other languages. Moreover, the training was completed in all five theaters within an unprecedented 48 business days, from the first training sessions in January 2009 to completion of virtual sessions for all 6000 initially targeted users at the end of March.
by LeAnne Schrotzberger, public relations manager, Cisco Corporate Communications
Posted by Leanne Schrotzberger at 09:36AM PST
The Cisco on Cisco team recently published its first case study created entirely by leveraging the three pillars of a Web 2.0 environment: people, communities, and information (P-C-I). We met with the Worldwide Sales Process and Systems team (the people) to discuss their process of migrating to Cisco WebEx Training Center (the information). Then the Cisco on Cisco team built a case study using the collective community knowledge on Ciscopedia, Cisco’s newest global collaborative space where Cisco employees can share and find knowledge on a wealth of topics (the community). After the case study was finalized and approved on Ciscopedia by both teams, it was published it to the Cisco on Cisco website and featured it on relevant blogs, Twitter (@CiscoIT), and other social media efforts.
Posted by Leanne Schrotzberger at 03:39PM PST
By John Hernandez, general manager, Cisco Customer Contact Business Unit
During challenging economic times, savvy organizations seek ways to differentiate their business through tighter customer affinity, while they plan for the inevitable recovery. One of the key investment areas to differentiate the business is the contact center. Gartner just published Market Share: Contact Centers, Worldwide, 2008 which shows that Cisco’s contact center business grew 31% from 2007, while agent seats grew 36%. Cisco is now #2 in agent seats and a mere four tenths of a percentage point from being #2 in total contact center revenue. While the fact that we’ve captured significant market share is not a surprise, the notable decline faced by most competitors (some even in double digits) indicates that organizations are choosing Cisco as their partner to build sustainable competitive advantage, including world class service.
Posted by Leanne Schrotzberger at 05:45PM PST
I was at my neighborhood grocery store the other day and it’s one of those stores that requires “shoppers cards” to get the best price on certain items. Fail.
I’m a capitalist, and therefore I’m willing to let you track my buying habits in exchange for fifty cents off the price of milk. It’s a commercial transaction I can live with at the end of the day. Yes, I eat more then a healthy amount of ice cream and knowing that someone is running a tally somewhere is a bit worrisome, then again anybody can figure that out by scanning my tweets. My big issue with loyalty cards in this situation is the inconvenience of forcing me to carry a card. I’m the customer and you are putting the burden on me to carry around a piece of your plastic to identify myself. Have you met anyone recently who has spare room in their wallet to carry more cards? To make matters worse this particular grocery store is two miles from my house and I’m there at least once a week so I feel like they should say, “Hello Mr. Famous. Nice to see you again.” every time I walk in the door instead of asking me to produce a card to identify myself.
Posted by Tod Famous at 09:20AM PST
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