Read this article about Cisco, one of our finalists, in the category Best Achievement of Operational Excellence in Internet, Education, Media & Technology, selected by the independent judging panel, for the 2020 Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Industry Awards program.

Cisco’s Sales Acquisition Integration & Divestitures team supports Cisco’s company transformation by accelerating our acquisition growth strategy through sales optimization. We enable synergy from acquisitions and sharpen strategic focus through divestitures. We accelerate growth and capture market transitions. We are the bridge to possible.

Our operational improvement journey began at Cisco’s annual sales meeting in August 2018. Cisco Sales & Marketing launched The Bridge to Possible campaign. For us, it was not just words and inspiration, but truly what we do every day. We are the bridge to bring acquisitions on board and to allow sales momentum to continue. This was the impetus for how we thought about our organization and the work we do.

To begin, we set a short-term, one-year goal to accelerate operational excellence in our Sales Acquisition Integration and Divestiture approach.

This goal was reflected in our FY19 priorities to:

• Be Cisco’s world-class go-to-market strategy and execution team

• Support our value driver to meet and exceed the CFO commit

• Establish a sales culture practice for acquisitions

• Solidify our divestiture methodology

• Develop an acquisition performance dashboard

• Lead the SFDC update for Software as a Service (Saas)

• Evangelize our team brand and enrich our team capabilities

We started by defining the team vision, strategic objectives, Sales and Field Readiness framework, and acquisition timeline and milestones, and used these to train our team and extended cross-functional partners. This helped to build greater alignment across acquisition integration teams in our overall goto-market approach. We also created repeatable and customizable smartsheet templates to align our tasks, initiatives, and practices to our overall value driver programs.

We then focused on developing two practices.

• We created a four-step Sales culture practice for acquisitions to help discover and address culture differences between the acquisition and Cisco sales, to help retain key talent, and allow continued growth. Steps include Assess, Evaluate, Action Plans, and Measure.

• We also solidified our methodology for divestments outlining the process, steps and best practices to maximize return, reduce separation costs to Cisco, and ensure a smooth transition to the buyer with minimal employee and customer impact while protecting Cisco’s remaining business.

Our other priorities were two transformational projects.

• Our team developed an acquisition performance dashboard to track performance, attainment, penetration, and growth of acquisitions against metrics such as actuals, commit, forecast, plan, and CFO commits with more metrics coming in future phases. We can track metrics at a worldwide or region level for monthly, quarterly or year-to-date timeframes.

• We also led the effort to reduce the number of SFDC platforms and create a main SFDC platform to support Software-as-a-Service offers.

Overall, we set out to drive meaningful change in how we optimize, accelerate, and measure the growth of acquisitions. We did this by further defining our team’s strategy, operating model, repeatable practices, and improving how we track metrics.

About the Awards

The Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Awards have been established to showcase globally the most outstanding organizational achievements through the application of Operational Excellence programs. Click here to view the Press Release.

The winners will be announced at the Awards Ceremony at The Business Transformation & Operational Excellence World Awards (BTOES) on Wednesday, March 25th, 2020, from 6.30pm in the Venetian Ballroom at the Loews Portofino Bay Hotel at Universal Orlando Resort.

The Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Awards are open to all organizations, both private and public sector, across the globe, which have implemented Operational Excellence programs to deliver outstanding business results.

The Awards will be held in conjunction with the Business Transformation & Operational Excellence World Summit, BTOES 2020 in the beautiful Venetian Ballroom on March 25, 2020 at the Loews Portofino Bay Hotel at Universal Orlando™️. Click to access the agenda, view the current speakers, and watch the highlights video from last year.

BTOES.com

The issues in this article are just one of topic areas that are going to be discussed at the Business Transformation & Operational Excellence World Summit & Industry

BTOES is the industry’s biggest and best, senior-level, cross-industry gathering of Business Transformation & Operational Excellence industry leaders and senior executives.

It also hosts the Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Awards, which showcase globally the most outstanding organizational achievements through the application of Operational Excellence programs.

The summits hosts a number of private forums for C-Level & Global corporate-level leaders as well as business unit heads.

With over 150 speakers, over 100 sessions, 12 Keynotes, 9 Track Themes, 5 parallel tracks, 60+ track sessions, 50 roundtable discussions, 20 Interactive Workshops, 6 Thought Leader Panels, 5 Leaders Boardrooms, 5 co-located events, the Industry Awards Program, Site Visits, 20+ hours of social networking including 2 gala cocktail parties, dinners, numerous group activities, this is the ultimate event to benchmark, network and drive Operational Excellence to the next level.

Quick Links

Speakers

Agenda

BTOES Awards

There is a strong focus on Cultural Transformation, Customer Delight, Sustaining an Operational Excellence program, Need for end-to-end Business Transformation, Keeping up with new technologies/impact of digitalization and Leadership Buy-in & Understanding. We dedicated two tracks to advanced technologies, such as AI, Machine Learning, RPA, Predictive Analytics, Blockchain, Cloud infrastructure etc.

The agenda is designed to encourage active meaningful conversations though all day enhanced networking and interaction opportunities, including

• All-day Refreshment & Themed Breaks

• 1¼ Hour Hot Breakfast Networking Sessions

• 1½ Hour Hot Plated Networking Lunches with Topic & Industry Sector focussed tables

• 1½ Hour Roundtable Sessions by Topic & Industry Sector.

• Keynote & Themes Panel Sessions

• Hosted Welcome Receptions from 5.30pm

• Expanded more lavish Awards Program

• Newly launched Night Summit for attendees to meet after dinner

For more information or to discuss the summit in more detail please schedule a call below,

Click here to schedule a call.