Five Waves of Value

Unified communications is now one of the top two strategic technologies for organizations. (Gartner, October 2007) Companies of all sizes, including more than 85 percent of Fortune 500 companies, use Cisco's network-centric approach to build competitive advantage.

Cisco Unified Communications is designed to deliver five distinct waves of business value.

1. Cost Savings Through Consolidation
   The first wave occurs when migrating to IP telephony. Consolidating voice, video, and data networks onto a single IP network makes it possible for companies to reduce the cost of communications, take advantage of underused network capacity, and lay a foundation for unified communications.


2. The Companywide Collaboration Effect
   The second wave of value comes when you extend applications, such as unified clients, IM, presence, and unified messaging across the business. The more unified communications applications you use, the greater the overall benefits.
   
   With unified communications, you can obtain up to two hours of more productive work from individuals each day. Research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey (formerly Sage Research) calls this "The Collaboration Effect." Unified Communications Applications: Uses and Benefits, Chadwick Martin Bailey, July 2008
   
   

   There's no better example of "The Collaboration Effect" than Cisco itself.

   Less Travel, More Productivity

   By using its own TelePresence, WebEx and standard audio-video conferencing, Cisco reduced internal travel by 99 percent and training-related travel by 98 percent. Cisco cut travel expenses by more than half (from approximately $750 million per year to approximately $350 million per year.) Cisco also:

   • Shortened its average sales cycle by five days
   • Improved sales closure rates by two percent (valued at $127 million)
   • Increased interaction with customers by 45 percent (due to less time spent traveling)
   • Increased productivity for senior and executive management and other experts (valued at $42 million)

   (Source: Transnational Travel News Feb 11, 2009)

   In a pilot, Cisco extended unified communications and collaboration capabilities to 3,000 of its field sales users. Capabilities such as single number reach, instant messaging, presence, video, click-to-call, and impromptu web conferencing all worked together to provide mobile workers with an additional 65 minutes of productivity every day.

   Cisco expects that this additional productivity will contribute to an increase in revenue growth that will provide a projected annual value of $87.5 million for Cisco. These savings can be used to fund other productivity-building projects.

   Improved Customer Service

   With Cisco Unified Communications in your call center, you can proactively connect customers with the information and expertise they need, when they need it. The addition of presence and video support lets you quickly connect callers with subject matter experts, regardless of where they're located throughout the enterprise. In a 2008 study by Sage Research:

   • 41 percent of users surveyed reported a 6-10 percent increase in first call resolution
   • 33 percent reported an 11-25 percent improvement in response rates
   • 10-30 percent more calls were handled with the same staff while increasing customer satisfaction


3. Transforming Business Processes
   

   The third wave of business value is achieved by embedding unified communications capabilities into business processes. High-end Japanese retailer, Mitsukoshi, embedded unified communications capabilities in its inventory application to optimize the customer experience in one of its biggest profit centers.

   In the six months that Mitsukoshi piloted its unified communications-enabled RFID inventory application, it:

   • Increased top line growth by 113 percent over the previous year
   • Reduced its sales cycle time by 20 percent
   • Dramatically improved customer satisfaction


4. Streamlining Business Processes
   

   The fourth wave of business value occurs through extending unified communications to customers and partners. When United Kingdom-based JJ Food Service extended unified communications capabilities to its most important customers, it achieved a $6.5 million gain in productivity in its contact centers by reducing the number of transfers and callbacks.

   This reduction was accomplished by tightly integrating the contact center with its customer relationship management (CRM) application, and by taking advantage of the intelligent call routing capabilities of unified communications to dramatically streamline the process.



5. Boundary-Free Collaboration
   

   The fifth wave of business value is boundary-free collaboration. Cisco and a large Japanese company used the network as a platform for global collaboration.

   The two companies partnered to co-develop and co-brand a solution that gave Cisco more presence in the Asian market. The solutions also helped the Japanese company win 60 percent of a larger customer's core network business worth 30 billion yen in the first two years.

   With the ability to collaborate across borders and enterprise boundaries, Cisco and its partner achieved important objectives that neither would have reached as easily alone.