Webex Teams Transforms the Work Culture at Cisco

The Right Tool for the Job

Collaboration and communication are the pinnacle of efficient organizations; IT departments are no exception. So, in 2001, Cisco IT started on a journey to enhance and enable the way our teams work together. With 140,000 people spread across 96 countries and 38 time zones, we need solutions that allow asynchronous messaging, enterprise-grade audio and video meeting experiences, and robust calling capabilities. Webex Teams delivers the messages, but our people transform the workplace.

Our work culture is one of openness, where innovation breathes easily because we can communicate across organizations, hierarchies, and boundaries. As a Collaboration solution provider, Cisco often deploys the same solutions as our customers. Our workforce uses Webex Teams (see Cisco IT’s experience with Webex Teams) and we take their considerations to heart when it comes to simplifying the experience without compromising on advanced capabilities and options. Giving our people the freedom to work how they want is balanced with keeping the organization safe, secure and compliant.

Over time, however, expectations and technology have evolved – the experiences we make possible needs to be better than the experiences offered by consume applications. It’s why Webex Teams now forms a key element of the services available to the Cisco workforce. Webex Teams is an easy-to-use platform with centralized workstreams, and its managed so that it guarantees security and compliance.

A Transformation to Remember

Build it and they will come! Launch and it’ll go viral! Wouldn’t’ that be great? In all honesty, its easy to underestimate the challenges of introducing a new app, let alone getting users to change the way they work to adopt a new way of working. At the enterprise level, it’s harder than you might think. We’re set in our ways when it comes to how we work. We have established ways of doing things with tools we’ve used since we started working. If a colleague tells me about a great new app or gadget, I can be persuaded to try it, but only if it solves my productivity pain points. And this is what we’ve seen with Webex Teams. Once people see and experience the benefits of starting a wireless screen share without having to plug in cables, or getting everyone on a large team into the same Team Space in a group chat that tracks file uploads, keywords, and callouts, they’re hooked. They also enjoy those added bonuses of sending GIFs and emojis…we like to have fun at work too!

Connect Anytime, Anywhere, on any Device

With the ability to connect anytime, anywhere, on any device with Webex Teams, we can use messaging, file sharing, video meetings, whiteboarding, calling, bots, and integrations with other tools in a single application. The tight integration with the 25,000 Webex Devices in Cisco offices around the world makes Webex Teams a compelling companion app to start meetings, control devices, and share content – all wireless. At Cisco, we also have many people using other collaboration apps, such as Webex Meetings and Jabber, so compatibility with these apps is crucial. Our workforce has the option to choose the apps best-suited for their roles, or because they want a more gradual change-over.

This is not an issue as Webex Teams users can join meetings scheduled with Webex Meetings and Jabber users can use Teams Messaging Mode to have messaging compatibility with Webex Teams. It makes the transition smooth and painless as users choose when and how they adopt Webex Teams. The measure of success is that we now have Webex Teams established as the go-to App for messaging, calling and meetings needs in Cisco.

Learn From Our Experiences

Is your enterprise looking for ways to improve team productivity? The Cisco IT team have detailed the inside track on how they successfully rolled out Webex Teams to deliver Workplace Transformation.

To learn more on how Webex Teams delivers Workplace Transformation, get the inside look here.