Cisco is at forefront of social media usage within their organization

1. Analysis & Outlook
Social Media @ Cisco-Quad based Integrated Workforce Experience for Employees
Cisco integrated social media at a strategic level and provided its employees internal
collaboration tools and intranet which employees were actively encouraged to use them
for improving their performance and their productivity. Top Management invested
millions of dollars in developing these tools and platforms and the CEO, CTO and other
top executives of Cisco are active bloggers and initiate conversations that inspire
employees to actively participate and use these tools. Cisco believes it is necessary for
businesses to adapt to the new trends and changes that are happening with the rapid rise
of mobility and the availability of devices like tablets, smartphones, etc. Employees as
well as consumers are using these devices and other social networking tools extensively
in their personal lives and are looking to use them in workplaces and businesses do not
have any other option but to provide them with access to such devices and tools for the
organizational success. Cisco provided its employees IWE, which is a platform that has
various tools for networking, sharing, communicating with other employees within the
organization.
Cisco's global intranet home page is Cisco Employee Connection which employees use
for everything from meeting schedules, e-mail, and communications to online expense
reporting, distance learning, and telecommuting services. For Cisco employees this
intranet has been a platform to share and collate information and knowledge among
themselves but it lacked the personal touch and feel. Employees were also looking to
use collaborative tools like blogs, wikis, videos, forums etc within the organization in
their projects and daily activities. Cisco in 2009 developed Integrated Workforce
Experience (IWE) an internal collaboration platform that employees can use effectively
to connect, communicate, and collaborate with people and communities, as well as
share information for organizational growth, encourage innovation and create
sustainable productivity. In 2010 Cisco moved IWE to Cisco Quad environment which
provides all the social networking tools like blogs, Facebook and twitter styled,
YouTube styled video sharing sites, etc to all the employees internally.
IWE allows employees to find and connect with experts within the organization
through an internal directory similar to Facebook with employee profiles that highlight
their expertise, activities and interests and helps in socializing among employees.
Employees can also create communities and organize into groups based on their work,
expertise, interests, hobbies, etc and collaborate and share knowledge for the
organizational success. Employees share content in the form of documents, videos, blog
posts, discussion forums and IWE is the most important source of data and information
for the employees and they can distribute the information easily with IWE. Another
important feature of IWE is personalized workspaces for the employees called My
View which is user defined home page that provides access for people, communities,
news, applications and events and also provide the necessary updates and activities of
various connected employees and member communities. Employees can easily interact
with the internal systems of Cisco easily through IWE and use it in their daily activities
and transactions.
According to Cisco, key statistics highlight the IWE use among employees as of mid
2011: Nearly 87,000 unique visitors with software developers and salespeople
Rajesh Prabhakar Analyst Bio @ http://socialmediacases.blogspot.com/

2. Analysis & Outlook
comprising the largest portions of this total. More than 900,000 visits to the IWE site
per quarter and the overall average of 6.05 visits per week per user indicates that IWE
has become a regular part of employees’ work activity. More than 1000 IWE
communities created, of which slightly more than half are open to all IWE users. The
number of communities has quadrupled in one year as employees see IWE's value for
sharing information and resources with colleagues by project, location, interest, etc.
Almost 14,000 IWE users "follow" other users in order to receive alerts when those
employees posed new information or take other action within IWE. The follow
capability is especially effective for technical experts and managers who post resources
of interest to multiple colleagues within their department or across the company.
Statistics also show the popularity of IWE features: A 25 percent increase in the
number of IWE discussion forum messages in one month. 1,400 videos created by
Cisco employees and embedded in IWE for on-demand viewing via the Cisco Show
and Share solution. (Source: How Cisco IT Evolved Enterprise Social Software and Collaboration)
Cisco employees are provided with the necessary guidelines and policy is in place to
control the social media activity and the strategy for social media is determined by a
team of ten people called centre of excellence. Within each department responsibility
lies with specific people who control the activities. Employees are trained through 30
workshops which trains employees in terms of social media policy and how to behave
on social media platforms and necessary certifications are provided once they complete
the trainings and the people who control the social media activity and participate in the
social media strategy formulation these trainings are must. Cisco Social Media Policy
also encourages employee participation in various platforms and they are also provided
with incentives for such participation. Employees who are key contributors are
rewarded through mentions in newsletters, annual awards and also team awards are
given for active participation. The social media participation with customers and other
employees is also a KPI in the employee annual performance review process.
Employees are also provided with the support of the technical experts who will help in
the participation on the social media platforms and create, distribute content like
videos, blog posts, documents, etc.
Cisco created a culture within the organization that actively supports the use of various
social networking tools within the organization by the employees to collaborate,
communicate and share knowledge. The quad based IWE is at the centre of this and top
management use of Video conferencing, blogs, wikis and podcasts as part of the
communication with the employees has encouraged employees even more too actively
use the social media tools as evident in the usage statistics. Cisco has realized
significant business value in terms of cost savings, improved employee productivity,
and transformed business processes through the IWE platform. Cisco gained between
US$3 million and $24 million in the value of increased employee productivity based on
IWE usage and expects to increase to between $9 million and $68 million by mid-2012
based on increased adoption. Cisco also benefited in increased sales of products as
employees and sales teams collaborate effectively in driving sales. Cisco also uses
social media actively in its B2B initiatives with customers and channel partners. With
tremendous success of Quad internally within Cisco, Cisco sold the Quad offering
externally to customers and Cisco has 50 companies — about 700,000 users — paying
for the service.
Rajesh Prabhakar Analyst Bio @ http://socialmediacases.blogspot.com/