five to thrive strategies: unlock employee potential...the five to thrive unlock employee potential...
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Solution Overview
© 2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 1 of 2
Five to Thrive Strategies: Unlock Employee Potential
Tough times require communicating clearly and helping employees unlock their potential for creativity and
innovation. Capitalizing on employee potential directly affects an organization's ability to retain top talent,
as well as improving revenue growth, competitive differentiation, and time to market for new products.
Tools and processes that emphasize communication between and among leaders and employees can
improve your company’s leadership and make employees more effective, innovative, and motivated. Here
are three ways to make that happen.
1. Help employees be more productive and innovative with collaboration tools: Give employees the power to
collaborate with each other wherever they are using solutions such as Cisco Mobility, presence, click to call,
remote worker, and other collaborative tools.
Cisco Accelerates Deal Approval Approximately 40 percent of all customer agreements at Cisco require special approval, and approximately half
require human intervention. Because they did not know when agreements had been approved, sales employees
had to check their status frequently throughout the day. By enabling real-time collaboration between sales and
approvers when a “hold” occurs, Cisco sales teams and channel partners can resolve issues more quickly, thus
accelerating revenue recognition.
2. Harness the collaborative power of all employees to maximize effectiveness and efficiency: Cisco
collaboration and video solutions enable you and your customers to increase interactions and the availability of
experts. Solutions such as Cisco WebEx, WebEx Connect, and Expert On Demand using Cisco TelePresence
allow you to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty without increasing resources.
Cisco Improves Sales Force Productivity
Cisco implemented a Network Enhanced Workspace initiative that combined multiple Cisco Unified
Communications solutions to 3,000 Cisco sales employees. Using mobile, video, and collaboration applications,
sales people reduced the average time needed to communicate by 65 minutes per day and achieved 17 percent
Solution Overview
© 2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 2 of 2
higher revenue growth. At the same time, sales teams were able to spend more time with customers and
improve service delivery.
Cisco Improves Support for Mac Users
With more than 5,000 Apple Macintosh users at Cisco but no spare IT resources for supporting them, Mac users
began helping each other. A wiki portal was established to support Mac users with solutions, resources, and tips.
It has more than 750 contributors and 10,000 unique visits per month, and it replaces 40,000 email messages.
Cisco is able to avoid US$1.6 million in help desk costs annually and improves user productivity and uptime for
an annual value of $2.6 million.
3. Nurture employees by focusing on motivation and morale: Promoting a collaborative culture helps build
employee morale and therefore productivity. Tools such as wikis, videos, and blogs enable employees to voice
questions, concerns, opinions, and ideas, all of it feedback for innovation. Cisco Unified Communications
solutions such as Cisco TelePresence and WebEx can also play a strong role in promoting a community
atmosphere among employees across geographically remote locations.
Consumer Packaged Goods Company Builds Idea Supply Chain
With 138,000 employees in 80 countries, a leading packaged goods company wanted to include its customers,
partners, and academia in its efforts to continually innovate products. Using Cisco TelePresence, the company's
employees conducted 600 innovation meetings per month while avoiding 5,000 trips. The results added up to
more than US$29 million in travel costs, accelerated decision making, and a strengthened ability to innovate with
partners.
Unlocking Employee Potential
The Five to Thrive Unlock Employee Potential strategy represents a proven, sound approach. With employees as
their most valuable assets, companies that use collaboration technologies and their accompanying business process
to unlock their employees’ full potential will be the ones that navigate successfully through the tough times and
emerge as thriving companies in the upturn.
Printed in USA C22-540499-00 05/09