Cisco simplifies change management, improves sales workflows, and optimizes software use

Cisco, a global technology leader in cloud, security, and networking solutions, embarked on a transformative journey to shift its business model from hardware to software products and introduce more sustainability offerings – which included a focus on streamlining its sales workflows and maximizing operational efficiency. The organization needed a robust change management strategy to get sellers up to speed on its offerings and ensure they followed best practices, including securely and effectively using enterprise generative AI tools.

To navigate this transformation and continuous change management needs, Cisco turned to WalkMe. Now, the organization analyzes the digital footprint of its team members, optimizes license usage, and builds digital adoption solutions that guide employees through key sales workflows and behaviors. Utilizing WalkMe Discovery, Cisco gained invaluable insights into how its sellers used various systems, enabling targeted interventions and ensuring efforts were concentrated where they would be most impactful. Additionally, WalkMe Discovery helped the organization identify underutilized software licenses and platforms, saving over $450,000 in annual software spend. WalkMe is now deployed on more than 30 applications in Cisco’s sales ecosystem and supports key business initiatives – and the team continues to use WalkMe Discovery to identify areas to optimize costs and improve programs.

As Cisco, a global technology leader in cloud, security, and networking solutions, embarked on a strategic journey to transition its offerings from hardware to software, it needed to evolve its sales processes accordingly. With WalkMe already in use by the company, Cisco wanted to enhance its digital adoption strategy to solve new challenges, like the emergence of AI, and develop a data-driven understanding of its team members’ behavior so it could drive the right actions.

Historically, Cisco relied on traditional communication methods, such as email and live, in-person enablement sessions, and required development resources to implement sales process updates in its sales tech stack. This approach was time-intensive and information was often overlooked, leading to lower than desired adoption. WalkMe solved this initial challenge, but Cisco continually launches new, innovative offerings and enhances its sales processes to the needs of the business.

As the company planned to launch new sustainability solutions, Cisco saw a prime opportunity to use digital adoption content to ensure that sellers not only knew about them, but adhered to sales best practices in the field.

“We set out to uplevel the company’s use of WalkMe for different modalities, helping our sellers adopt best practices and achieve our strategic goals. We wanted to remove the friction sellers encounter when executing their sales tasks and decrease the time spent in different sales opportunity stages – and ultimately drive more sales, faster” said Steffaney Zohrabyan, Sales Insights & Innovation Leader at Cisco.

Additionally, like many organizations, Cisco wanted to get ahead of AI usage and ensure employees used approved, secure platforms.

Cisco turned to WalkMe to build solutions that ensured sellers’ actions were in direct alignment with broader business initiatives, like driving the company’s sustainability offerings, and enabled sellers to complete core sales workflows efficiently. This included capabilities like reminders to complete opportunity management activities, guidance for executing stage 0 opportunities, prompts to connect with experts for bid management support, and more.

“I like to have a conversation with my stakeholders on the value of what we can do with WalkMe,” Zohrabyan said. “I can show that, while a solution would usually take six weeks, two sprints, and a significant budget, with WalkMe we can have it done by lunchtime.”

The organization also turned to WalkMe Discovery for insights into user behaviors, empowering the company to provide tailored in-app support, offer up sales best practices in the flow of work, maximize return on investment, and direct users to approved AI platforms. One quick, yet powerful win came from using WalkMe Discovery to understand where software licenses were underutilized or overlapped with other services. This information was previously unavailable or convoluted to find, but now the organization has visibility that enables teams to choose to not renew or reduce license counts – and redirect the funds to high performing programs or systems. In one case, a department had 4,000 licenses for a service, but only 1,000 were being actively used, so it chose to reduce its license count at renewal time: a 75% savings.

Utilizing WalkMe Discovery, Cisco identifies and understands sellers’ digital footprint – like the platforms they visit most – and creates targeted interventions to guide them to take necessary actions, ensuring efforts are concentrated where they have the most impact. For example, leading up to the company’s sales kickoff event, all sales and sales-adjacent team members needed to complete a required training course focused on end-to-end workflow transformation, from new product campaigns to new sales methodology. The organization used WalkMe Discovery to understand the tools different roles used in their day-to-day work. With this information in hand, they targeted individuals who hadn’t yet completed the course on other platforms – like after they booked travel on SAP Concur – and built WalkMe solutions that automatically directed them to view and complete the course on MindTickle. To ensure swift completion, the team also built digital adoption solutions throughout the MindTickle platform to simplify navigation and ensure Cisconians could focus on learning and understanding the content.

“We start with data first,” Zohrabyan said. “WalkMe has better reporting than any other tools and, with it, we build solutions that help team members take action. We find them where they are and get them where they need to be.”

In addition to sales and IT initiatives, Cisco also uses WalkMe to support other company-wide strategic programs. For example, the company hosts a quarterly event with a mascot — Lumi — and focuses on how team members can commit to improving 1% each day to support Cisco’s digital transformation. As part of this program, employees are encouraged to choose one of four transformation initiatives they feel committed to and add the corresponding badge to their profile. Instead of relying on a knowledge base or PDFs with instructions, the Cisco team used WalkMe to automatically guide employees through the process. In just a few days, more than 3,000 Cisconians had selected their commitments, giving the company insight into which commitments resonated most with team members, so they can tailor programs that further inspire employees and create a united culture.

Cisco has also gained insight into platforms where WalkMe had not yet been implemented, identifying and understanding shadow IT and shadow AI usage – and intervening as needed. With WalkMe Discovery, Cisco uncovered insight into team members’ AI usage, proactively identifying potential risks for the company. In just five minutes, Zohrabyan and team created a solution providing immediate, unavoidable guidance on approved platforms and practices any time someone visits an AI site.

WalkMe’s agility and deployment speed allows Cisco to respond quickly to emerging needs and opportunities. With real-time access to data, the organization gets a holistic view of platform usage and trends, so it can better understand where to direct resources.

When Cisco launched new sustainability offerings, it developed and launched workflow guidance for sellers in just two weeks – something that would have previously taken six weeks, development support, and an estimated $126,000 in time and people resources. Additionally, its digital adoption solution-based approach to promoting required annual sales training led to 99.8% of sellers completing courses on time: a previously unheard-of success.

The visibility and analytics available through WalkMe Discovery empower Cisco to make informed decisions, optimize software licenses — with an estimated annual savings of over $450,000 per year in just one department, and more opportunities for license optimization on the horizon — and further align its digital adoption strategies with the company’s goals. After using WalkMe Discovery to identify AI platform usage, the company successfully redirected employees to approved platforms and boosted compliant usage by 30%.

“When you come to the table with data, people tend to listen because it’s irrefutable. With WalkMe, we can not only move fast, but, with WalkMe Discovery, we’re able to unlock analytics like never before. As a result, we make data-driven decisions and implement solutions to business challenges lightning fast,” Zohrabyan continued.

Looking ahead, Cisco plans to expand its use of WalkMe to continue enhancing efficiency and engagement, including exploring WalkMe’s AI capabilities to streamline sales processes and give sellers more time to focus on customers.

“Now we know what excellence looks like,” Zohrabyan said. “We couldn’t possibly be as successful with these programs without the engagement we get from team members as a result of our WalkMe content.”

Cisco has bridged gaps in support and engagement and laid the groundwork for a future where digital adoption is a cornerstone in its approach to managing constant change.