Cisco Accelerates Informed Decisions With Full Transparency

With over 50,000 Cisco employees using Smartsheet to manage mission-critical work, it’s clear that the powerful cloud-based platform for work execution is helping the multinational technology company achieve its vision of powering the Internet. One example: Cisco’s services department relies on Smartsheet to manage and maintain transparency on program activities and budgets, while empowering the team to make the best decisions at the right time to better serve clients.

“Smartsheet is really instrumental in helping us achieve (our) vision,” said Hina Patel, director of Cisco’s Services, Programs, and Operations. “Our customers are looking for Cisco to be a critical partner… in order for them to be successful in providing comprehensive network capabilities to their customers.”

Patel explained that her organization spends about $300 million a year on system and technology improvements—but was not clear on “exactly what projects we’re doing, where they are, from a status perspective.” There also wasn’t a lot of accountability, no central way of managing conversations and decisions, and the main challenge of creating a services level program management organization, with transparency across all groups.

When Patel joined the organization, she found a tool that “kind of imploded on itself” because it lacked flexibility and required four weeks to get a couple of projects up on the dashboard, with each addition taking two more days. Patel rallied her team around Smartsheet, enabling Services to move from an organization that didn’t know what it was spending on project budgets to knowing exactly what’s being spent—all in a relatively short period of time.

Thanks to Smartsheet, Cisco’s Services organization has full transparency to accelerate decisions and deliver better customer service. “(The Smartsheet) notification feature shows you exactly what’s changed and who’s been doing what—and that’s huge! We were really enamored by that feature,” said Patel, who credits Smartsheet for helping the team focus on projects and challenges to be solved—not tools or formats.

“Smartsheet has a very low barrier to entry,” she added. “It’s not a lot of your investment from a time or money perspective to get a taste for what it can do. It would behoove you to take the time to give it a shot.”