If you followed my blog last year (and I appreciate those of you who offered comments), you know that Cisco has launched a collaboration solution internally which we call the “integrated workforce experience” or IWE.
In December, I told you about the deployment of IWE across our enterprise to 110,000 employees and contractors worldwide. This was the culmination of a multi-year project which started as a business process and IT initiative, and evolved into a business unit endeavor after our CEO John Chambers said: “product-ize it.”
For those of you at companies that are contemplating rolling out your own collaboration program, you may be interested in some of our metrics and key learnings.
Since our November 19th cutover to IWE being powered by Cisco Quad, we’ve had over 54,000 unique users of IWE, over 750,000 visits and more than 5.3 million hits. And, 390 different community groups now reside on IWE, and nearly 22,000 documents have been uploaded. In fact, the highest content creation on IWE has been via documents and posts.
In February, we had the highest ever monthly visitors, approaching 40,000 unique visitors in a short month. Cisco’s three largest functional groups accounted for 77% of all unique visitors to IWE in February. And, 18% of our employees have added colleagues to your Contact list (think “Friends” on Facebook).
Globally, IWE’s adoption rate has been steadily increasing – in fact, February had the highest ever Theatre awareness for all our global regions:
- Japan – 68 percent
- European markets – 57 percent
- Emerging markets – 56 percent
- US and Canada – 53 percent
- Asia Pacific – 32 percent
So, understanding that it is still in its early days, usage and adoption rates are encouraging.
IWE now powered by Cisco Quad has not been without some challenges as any IT deployment is bound to have. Based on our surveys, we know that the top three issues employees currently have with IWE are:
- Ease of use
- Performance improvements
- The ability to use IWE on mobile devices
Our IWE team is continually looking at and addressing ease of use and performance issues – this is a high priority for us. And, we are thrilled to be able to offer access to IWE from iPhones and iPads next month which we know employees want, will make IWE more relevant and, in turn, help drive higher adoption.
In addition, we continue to add new features –
- A new instant messaging feature, known as “Click to Chat,” which now allows employees to chat in real time with others from within IWE.
- Employees can now let others know if they’re available to chat through a new Presence feature that can be set to display “available,” “do not disturb,” “away” or “offline.”
- A new “follow” feature enables team members to stay current on the activities, information and opinions of their important contacts. This allows employees to add someone to their contact list and follow their public IWE activities.
- Employees can increase conversations about activities, information and status updates by commenting on people’s activities directly within the enhanced Activities application.
Adopting IWE powered by Cisco Quad is an ever-evolving journey, and we’re just beginning. I’ll keep you posted on additions and updates as we travel our own collaboration road.
Next week, I’ll tell you how one of our functional business groups (Customer Value Chain Management) is using IWE successfully to transform its business
Until then, happy collaborating!
- Post by Sheila Jordon, Communication and Collaboration IT, Cisco
