Cutting costs with Cisco TelePresence
Reducing costs with Cisco TelePresence photo.
Question: Let’s talk a little bit about collaboration because that is something that Cisco has preached for quite sometime. Cisco jumped on board early with Web 2.0 and collaboration tools. Is the company truly using them as a tool as opposed to just as a novelty?
Rebecca Jacoby, CIO of Cisco: Well, the answer is yes and I think we are talking it well beyond a tool. We believe and I believe in my organization is working toward this vision that the collaboration technologies that are available today, so Web 2.0 and in particular video technologies and how you can use video technologies in the communications process in your business, they are offering us an opportunity to use technology to be able to really create an entirely different globalized environment for using human resources to come to bear to solve these kinds of challenges or to go after new innovative processes in the business.
And so we are doing this essentially in every asset of our business processes today. So things as fundamental as finance, but as really interesting as how do we actually bring product ideas to the table and turn them into business units that we can actually turn to really value both for ourselves and for our customers.
Question: Can you give us an example of how these collaboration tools have been used to innovate, some specific examples?
Rebecca Jacoby, CIO of Cisco:
Right. So one of the best examples I have for bringing value to our company with these collaboration technologies is really telepresence. So if you are familiar with the telepresence technology, it’s really a whole different level of video communications where you can bring together with a high definition screen and based on our unified communications platform, we can bring people together to have the kind of interaction you would normally only be able to have in person. It’s a completely different type of experience. And so, we have used the telepresence technology to become closer to our customers.
I have a deployment of over 230 telepresence units globally today and using telepresence technologies and other collaborative technologies, every part of our sales force over the last year has been able to drop travel expenses by over 20% and has actually been able to increase their customer interactions upwards of 30% in every part of the world. And so, that’s just a huge value to the company and a value to our customers, and where somebody like me who isn’t really a sales person can actually spend time with the customers and given my personal experience using these technologies and so on. So that’s one example.
Question: Let’s talk a little bit about collaboration because that is something that Cisco has preached for quite sometime. Cisco jumped on board early with Web 2.0 and collaboration tools. Is the company truly using them as a tool as opposed to just as a novelty?
Rebecca Jacoby, CIO of Cisco: Well, the answer is yes and I think we are talking it well beyond a tool. We believe and I believe in my organization is working toward this vision that the collaboration technologies that are available today, so Web 2.0 and in particular video technologies and how you can use video technologies in the communications process in your business, they are offering us an opportunity to use technology to be able to really create an entirely different globalized environment for using human resources to come to bear to solve these kinds of challenges or to go after new innovative processes in the business.
And so we are doing this essentially in every asset of our business processes today. So things as fundamental as finance, but as really interesting as how do we actually bring product ideas to the table and turn them into business units that we can actually turn to really value both for ourselves and for our customers.
Question: Can you give us an example of how these collaboration tools have been used to innovate, some specific examples?
Rebecca Jacoby, CIO of Cisco: Right. So one of the best examples I have for bringing value to our company with these collaboration technologies is really telepresence. So if you are familiar with the telepresence technology, it’s really a whole different level of video communications where you can bring together with a high definition screen and based on our unified communications platform, we can bring people together to have the kind of interaction you would normally only be able to have in person. It’s a completely different type of experience. And so, we have used the telepresence technology to become closer to our customers.
I have a deployment of over 230 telepresence units globally today and using telepresence technologies and other collaborative technologies, every part of our sales force over the last year has been able to drop travel expenses by over 20% and has actually been able to increase their customer interactions upwards of 30% in every part of the world. And so, that’s just a huge value to the company and a value to our customers, and where somebody like me who isn’t really a sales person can actually spend time with the customers and given my personal experience using these technologies and so on. So that’s one example.
