Case Study: Cisco Systems
Awarded 8th Annual Corporate University Xchange Awards for Excellence and Innovation in Corporate Learning
Cisco Systems®, the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, faced a common corporate challenge. The company has a vast number of products and solutions, with little time to manage and deliver new information to the field, along with the added complexities of a large, geographically dispersed customer base. Thousands of products are added and updated on a regular basis, while old items are eliminated from their massive portfolio. Based in various locations around the world, sales representative needed up-to-the-minute information on its technology, new product introductions, enhancements, marketplace changes and competitive positioning..
“To stay lean and efficient, our sales personnel had to carefully balance their time between learning and actual selling,” explained Claire Markle, Marketing Programs Manager at Cisco Systems. “We needed to accomplish this while staying true to our corporate vision, ‘Changing the way we work, live, play, and learn’, and supporting our mission and purpose, ‘To shape the future of the Internet by creating value for our shareholders, customers, partners, and employees.’”
To help face this challenge, Cisco joined forces with Altus Learning Systems to provide Just In Time (JIT) content delivery by recording live events and conference calls, making all that informally transferred knowledge searchable down to the spoken word. Using a custom-branded vPortal, this data was organized in a common repository and offered in convenient downloadable formats to employees around the world.
In 2006, the company surveyed a sample of 597 sales representatives and found 93 percent liked the use of vSearch for audio downloads. More importantly, employees spent less time searching for information and more time serving their customers.
As a result of their success, Cisco was honored with the 8th Annual Corporate University Xchange Awards for Excellence and Innovation in Corporate Learning based on its thorough demonstration of the system and its influence in helping the company stay true to its mission, vision and culture.
This award recognizes:
- Superior methods used in creating a culture that: 1.) integrates work and learning and/or, 2.) encourages learning “anywhere/anytime”
- Exceptional strategies for organizational education, as well as the new learning model’s value and benefits
- The quality of technology systems and tools used to create new learning experiences
- The ability to develop online support systems for learners and the extent to which each system provides JIT and just-enough learning opportunities
- The effectiveness in blending learning methods with other learning functions
- The benefits of developing new learning technologies and the extent to which they have measurable impact
“With the assistance of the advanced Altus Learning Systems, their knowledge capture, post-production, indexing and vSearch online content repository, Cisco was able to achieve even its most ambitious media creation and distribution goals while gaining exceptional industry recognition."