Cisco Commerce Workspace an Example of Efficiency

To do business with Cisco once required the company’s partners to use 21 different commerce tools to get quotes, to configure, and to order products from Cisco, but with the Cisco Commerce Workspace, channel partners only need one. To get all of these tools working together as a seamless whole system provided a much faster system. It is no surprise that one of the company’s representatives, Thomas Winter, reported “significant productivity gains” from the system in his January 22, 2014 blog post.

With consolidation, the time spent in these tasks, from formulating quotes to processing orders, decreased dramatically. That alone could result in a significant boost in productivity. One gets tired just thinking about the previous system, with its 21 tools each taking up a significant chunk of time to use.

The Cisco Commerce Workspace also boasts a topnotch IT infrastructure. That will make it even more easy to do business with the tech company. The company plans to enlarge the Commerce Workspace so that it can process renewals for software, make WebEx ordering easier, and provide more ways for Cisco sales personnel and their partners can collaborate.

Cisco Commerce Workspace

Cisco Commerce Workspace

Although the transition was not without its challenges, the Cisco team solved those problems by savvy business principles that nearly every business should emulate. Getting the leadership team on the same page as the development team ensures that everyone is working toward the same goal. Such a plan is essential when change is in the air.

Adding expertise in interpersonal communications to its already-established reputation for excellence in digital communications made Cisco’s teams pull together to create a solution that helped drive 25 percent more business with their selling partners. Transparency, as well as listening to the ideas of others, helped the company move beyond its stilted former system.

Cisco also established a sense of urgency for the completion of the system. Doing so helped the teams focus on finding a solution that helped the parent company do its job better, thus establishing more job security for themselves as the company’s fortunes rose. Concentrating on driving more sales of its products also gave developers a tangible goal for which to strive.

Finally, Cisco created a design for its new system that was flexible enough to accommodate the needs of all its selling partners. The Cisco Commerce Workspace offers diverse solutions that can meet the specifications of a variety of companies with which Cisco partners.

cisco commerce workspace