To thrive in today’sfast-paced digital age, organizations need real-time access to knowledge,collaboration, and a continuous learning environment both inside and outside ofthe organization to deliver rapid innovation. Today, Cisco is introducing Cisco Collaborative Knowledge, a software-as-a-service (SaaS)solution designed to help our customers transform their organizations andempower any employee with the digital tools and technology they need to accessexperts, learning, and knowledge in real time.
Figure 1: Cisco Collaborative Knowledge provides the digitaltools and technology every employee needs to access experts, learning, andknowledge in real time.
In today’s evolving marketplace, organizations must developinnovative ways to train and update the skills in their workforce and shareexpertise both internally and with their customers. One of the greatestchallenges facing organizations today is not only a shortage of people—it isalso a shortage of key skills. With 90 percent of jobs expected to change inthe digital economy1, analysts predict therewill be an estimated shortage of 38- to 40-million college-educated workers by20202. To be positioned for growth,performance, and productivity, organizations must transform into digitalworkplaces where knowledge sharing, learning, and talent innovation are able tooccur in real-time, anytime, anywhere.
According toCushing Anderson, program vice president for project-based servicesresearch, IDC, “Talent agility isessential to success. Organizations need to be able to quickly get everyoneperforming at a high level by adding new skills and sharing institutionalknowledge. A collaborative knowledge solution can transcend the constraints oftime and place by harnessing the collective intelligence of the workforce toachieve both individual and organizational success.”
Cisco Collaborative Knowledge integratesbest-in-class consumer and business technologies to enable capabilities such ashighly secure knowledge sharing, expert identification, continuous learning,social networking, and analytics into one complete and end-to-end enterpriseknowledge exchange. With Cisco Collaborative Knowledge, workers are ableto benefit from these continuous learning features, helping organizationsinnovate and solve real-world business challenges.
Figure 2: Cisco Collaborative Knowledge integrates best-in-classconsumer and business technologies into one complete end-to-end enterpriseknowledge exchange.
Jeanne Beliveau-Dunn, vice president andgeneral manager, Cisco observes, “In today’sfast-paced digital workforce, knowledge, speed, and flexibility are key for anyorganization to succeed. Teams that are empowered digitally with access toexperts, learning, and knowledge in real-time are better equipped to solvebusiness challenges anytime, anywhere. Building on a tradition of leadership ineducation, collaboration, and highly secure solutions for enterprises, alongwith our practitioners’ expertise in producing great outcomes for our owncompany, we are proud to introduce the tools and knowledge services ourcustomers need to reinvent talent.”
With Cisco Collaborative Knowledge,organizations are able to:
- Mobilize their workforce with knowledge, speed,and flexibility to create a more agile, engaged, and productive organization.For example, with Cisco Collaborative Knowledge, a mobile salesprofessional who is engaging with a new prospect can quickly access learningmodules that provide the information they need about a particular product,solution, or market right as they need it. Through knowledge that is available and sharable via a mobileplatform, everyone has quick access to valuable resources to shape the way theywork, learn, collaborate, and innovate together.
- Fast-track learning and knowledge sharing tofoster a culture of continuous learning and innovation. By integrating formaland informal learning resources, organizations can effectively reskill theirworkforces, or specific departments, by providing job-specific knowledge andtraining through a comprehensive platform. For example, in an initial pilot,the Cisco Services organization reskilled 14,000 employees in just over a yearto help transform Services into a consultative and outcomes-based solutions-sellingorganization.
- Tap into the collective knowledge of the entireorganization to innovate and transform the customer and employee experience.With Cisco Collaborative Knowledge, employees have instant access to experts,enterprise wide repositories of collective knowledge and social learning, andcollaboration tools that enable them to innovate in the moment to improve thecustomer and employee experience.
Michael Carter, vice president of HumanResources, Cisco says, “Emergingtechnology and the changing needs of the workforce are driving the need for HRto deploy solutions at the edge of the organization. Only by deploying theright HR infrastructure at the edge will businesses be able to develop aworkforce with the agility required to meet the needs of their customers, andat the same time engage the talent in a way that empowers them to define, grow,and re-define their careers. Cisco Collaborative Knowledge grew out of anin-house pilot that was created to connect the evolving needs of the businesswith the skills and capabilities in the workforce in a way that made thebusiness strategy relevant to how employees want to come together to connect,develop, and transform.”
Embracing proven Cisco collaboration technology, CiscoCollaborative Knowledge complements organizations’ existing in-house contentmanagement systems, social enterprise communities, learning investments, and HRsystems.
Availability
Cisco Collaborative Knowledge is generally available in NorthAmerica. For more detailed information, please visit: Cisco Collaborative Knowledge
About Cisco
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in IT that helpscompanies seize the opportunities of tomorrow by proving that amazing thingscan happen when you connect the previously unconnected. For ongoing news,please go to https://thenetwork.cisco.com.
1 OECD: Skills, Empowerment, Resilience—Skills and the Digital Economy
2 McKinsey Global Institute: The world at work: Jobs, pay, and skills for 3.5 billion people
