Client Story: Cisco

What if it was your company’s top priority to change the way we work, live, play, and learn? Cisco takes these goals very seriously and is shaping the future of the Internet by creating unprecedented value and opportunity for their customers, employees, investors, and ecosystem partners and has become the worldwide leader in networking — transforming how people connect, communicate and collaborate.

With this incredible vision driving their own learning efforts, Cisco collaborated with NC State Executive Education to create a program design that would enhance the effectiveness of their sales operations team in supporting internal and external clients. The program engaged Cisco’s globally-dispersed sales operations team in a shared learning environment, virtually connecting 32 participants on two continents, five countries, eight U.S. states, and six time zones. By connecting the team virtually in short sessions, NC State Executive Education was able to deliver learning material tied to project activities, and make the best use of the team members’ time and resources.

During the program, participants identified a set of strategic values for their subculture, which allowed them to develop service models that were both valuable to their clients and echoed their unit strategy. The process provided both learning for the participants and specific projects that can be rolled out with clients.

“I found tremendous value in the virtual training sessions with NC State. Most notably, the session on Building Effective Business Cases provided simple yet thought provoking tools to help think through the value delivered by a program and how to best describe that value to an executive audience. The virtual delivery using Cisco Telepresence technology was fantastic — no difference in effectiveness of learning with no travel time. I would highly recommend this to others,” said Cisco’s Director of Operations.