Communications Center of Excellence (CCoE)
In 2007, the foundational efforts of the Intranet Strategy Group described in the chapter led to the establishment of the Communications Center of Excellence (CCoE). According to Burns, the cross-functional CCoE initiative was chartered to bring together the resources of the community to provide guidance on the right tools to use to solve specific communications needs. The scope of these communications needs included everything from email to web to rich media.
The underlying CCoE value proposition focused on consolidation and alignment of ongoing Web 2.0 activities, which led to its formation. For example, CCoE
- Helps drive an enterprise collaboration framework, using collaborative tools.
- Harnesses energy (and funding!) to create better, broader capabilities, which can be leveraged by all.
- Avoids spending additional resources and funding on siloed, often redundant activities.
The value of consolidating efforts to drive adoption of collaborative tools more holistically across the company was soon realized as teams began to contribute resources and content toward the effort.
The original CCoE website, shown in Figure 10-14, was created to consolidate this enterprise Web 2.0 technology content in one location.
)
Figure 10-14 Original Communications Center of Excellence website.[11]
Some of the content Burns and team provided on the CCoE site include
- Web 2.0 technology pages, with info for getting started
- Technology roadmaps
- Communications challenges
- Solutions, best practices, and success stories
- Discussion forums
- News blog and project update blog
- One-minute video overviews
- Process and policies[11]
Since that time, Cisco’s Web 2.0 initiative has gone through an organizational change, resulting in the establishment of the groups currently leading Cisco’s adoption of Web 2.0 technology, introduced in Chapter 1:
- Corporate Communications Architecture (CCA), the business organization led by Jim Grubb, vice president of corporate communications, which evolved from the original Intranet Strategy Group, is focused on communication with internal employees as well as external audiences and includes Executive Technical Marketing, Collaboration Business Services, and Collaboration Business Technologies. The fact that the Corporate Communications team is also focused on rich media, such as video, synergizes and accelerates the incorporation of rich media into the people, information, community, and My Cisco pages, which comprise Cisco’s integrated workforce experience.
- Communications & Collaboration IT (CCIT), the IT organization led by Sheila Jordan, vice president of information technology, communications, and collaboration technology, is building the architecture to enable key business processes including communication, collaboration, delivery of employee services, innovation, and management.[50]
- Communications & Collaboration Delivery Team (CCDT), the team formed out of these two organizations, is now leading the Web 2.0 technology delivery effort.
These teams now partner to build out the latest version of the CCoE site, shown in Figure 10-15. Today, CCoE provides employees with the information they need to effectively use Web 2.0 technologies to get engaged and increase both internal and external collaboration across the company. For example, the CCoE site provides
- Vision, Strategy and Initiatives, providing information on plans for the future and strategic imperatives designed to achieve that vision.
- Technology Roadmap, laying out plans for Cisco, Web 2.0, personalization technologies, and related applications and services for the fiscal year.
- Communications & Collaboration Guide, tools and quick reference guides designed to help employees understand how and when to use each technology.
- Communications & Collaboration Learning, providing information on training series and other learning materials.
- Technologies & Tools, offering information on each of the various Web 2.0 technologies and tools, including availability, quick reference info, overview, and related discussions.
- Collaboration Across Cisco, showcasing and rewarding initiatives that implement Web 2.0 technologies to enable collaboration with employees, customers, and partners in an exceptional way.
- Executive Communications, offering tools and templates to enable more consistent, effective executive communications.
- Governance and Policies, providing links to the Cisco Code of Business Conduct and Social Networking Handbook, which provides policies, procedures, guidelines, and best practices in employee Web 2.0 technology use.
- Success Stories, focused on bringing stories on the Human Network Effect to light.
- Discussions, providing a list of discussion forums, organized by categories: General, Executive, Communications & Collaboration Guide, or Technologies & Tools, and ranked by views.
- CCoE Blog, where team members share thoughts and news on Web 2.0 technology rollouts affecting the company.[51]
)
Figure 10-15 Communications Center of Excellence (CCoE).[51]
Table 10-1 shows how Cisco’s Web 2.0 technology adoption and usage exploded during 2008, thanks to CCoE guidance and support. Wiki pages, for example, have grown five-fold in the last year, to eight times the number of pages of two years ago. TelePresence meetings have doubled in the last year, five times the number of two years ago. And there are now 31 times the number of WebEx Connect users than a year ago.
Table 10-1. Cisco’s Web 2.0 Technology Adoption Metrics[52]
|
Technology |
Adoption Metrics |
Increase of bold metrics |
|
|
Blogs |
February 2008 |
January 2009 |
|
|
Active Blogs |
756 |
1,992 |
|
|
Registered Bloggers |
2,870 |
7,792 |
3X |
|
Published Blog Entries |
3,296 |
11,457 |
|
|
Total Comments |
2,588 |
8,827 |
|
|
Discussion Forums |
January 2008 |
January 2009 |
|
|
Categories |
157 |
1,270 |
|
|
Forums |
312 |
2,847 |
|
|
Threads |
1,059 |
14,499 |
12X |
|
Messages |
3,058 |
44,297 |
|
|
Registered Users |
2,582 |
32,666 |
|
|
Groups |
41 |
137 |
|
|
Wikis |
January 2007 |
January 2009 |
|
|
Accounts (15K Editors) |
72,020 |
||
|
Spaces (330/Quarter) |
3,633 |
5X |
|
|
Pages (18K/Quarter) |
35,621 |
187,280 |
|
|
C-Vision |
January 2008 |
January 2009 |
|
|
Video Publishers |
130 |
2,108 |
16X |
|
Photo Publishers |
40 |
438 |
|
|
Videos Uploaded |
300 |
6,797 |
|
|
Photos Published |
100 |
3,475 |
23X |
|
Unique Viewers |
3,257 |
46,871 |
|
|
TelePresence |
January 2008 |
January 2009 |
|
|
Meetings |
90,000 |
215,833 |
2X |
|
WebEx Connect |
January 2008 |
January 2009 |
|
|
Users |
1,000 |
31,047 |
|
|
Spaces |
2,500 |
66,816 |
31X |
|
Documents |
2,000 |
238,310 |
|
|
CCoE Website |
January 2008 |
January 2009 |
|
|
Unique Users |
24,608 |
57,019 |
|
|
Visits |
26,868 |
63,935 |
2X |
|
Hits |
37,450 |
89,890 |
|
In January 2009, the CCoE site had nearly 90,000 hits, more than double the number measured a year earlier. The most hit pages in January 2009: CCoE Home, WebEx, RSS Publishers, Directory, and Blogs.[23] The next step in our ongoing metrics gathering process will be to identify and measure the business impact of these technologies: reduced search time, improved access to information, reduced email, faster and more effective decision-making, and increased ability to solve the more difficult problems, for Cisco and perhaps the world. In the words of vice president Jim Grubb, known as John Chamber’s product “Demo Guy,” “Collaboration this way helps a world community solve big problems.”[5]