Your Company's Success and the Internet

January 16, 2001

Read our chat with James Richardson, Cisco's Senior Vice President of the Enterprise Line of Business and Internet Communications Solutions Group. A senior staff member for nine years, James knows Internet trends and solutions and can help you to use the internet to improve your company’s success.

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Cisco: Welcome to the Cisco Smart Start Online Auditoriums. Today, James Richardson will answer your questions on Internet trends and business solutions. The auditorium is about to begin. Please enter your questions!

James Richardson: On behalf of Cisco Systems, I'd like to welcome you all to the first of our Smart Start Auditoriums. We understand that this is a new methodology of communicating to you and we look forward to a very healthy dialog. Thanks for joining us.

Netdms: I have heard a lot about your ICSG business. What is it and what can it do for my company?

James Richardson: ICSG is the Internet Communications Software Group. This is a group inside of Cisco that's developing software technology that allows us to blend multiple media channels of communication and present them in one unified manner. This technology is largely positioned and targeted at the higher end enterprise customer and higher end pulse center at this point in time, whereby an agent must be able to handle a voice communication concurrent with a data communication with a collaboration session. As we evolve our voice-over IP capability, this technology will become readily available through the latter half of this calendar year for smaller call centers. The other technology that we are developing here is unified communications technology, whereby instead of having just voicemail through the same access device, you can also review your fax and e-mail. This technology is available of any customer size of Cisco.

Preipo89: Where do you see the general enterprise market going in terms of the Internet?

James Richardson: The enterprise market is rapidly becoming aware of the capabilities of marrying the Internet to their information technology (IT) applications. As business executives become more aware, they are directing IT to involve applications to face the Internet. This trend is only just beginning, and we see that there are many strong years of evolution that will occur in the enterprise ahead of us.

Enterp44: As a start-up, we are growing and changing on a daily basis. What is Cisco doing to accommodate all their growth changes and what advice can you pass along?

James Richardson: I've been with Cisco for almost 11 years now, so I saw it in start-up mode, and the way we tried to address change then is the same we address it today, and that's by investing very heavily in applications that improve productivity and improve the relationship with our customers. Today we use the same technique of investing that you would in a start-up. I think today in a start-up you have to be just as focused on IT as you are on developing your technology or service. What you're looking for from IT is the ability to automate repeatable processes that improve productivity with the relationship with your customers, your supplier, your partners, and employees. Some of these applications are customer care, eCommerce, eLearning, workforce optimization, and supply chain management. The biggest payback is in the customer care arena. This is what creates loyalty and long-term business relationships with your customers.

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