Cisco Case Study
Cisco Provides Global Field Sales
Organization Mobile Access to
Enterprise Content and Business
Critical Data on Apperian’s
Mobile App Platform
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Executive Summary
The impetus for creating a Cisco enterprise app store traces back to the
December 2009 Chairman’s Club gathering, where the top sales people
gathered to celebrate the year’s accomplishments. In a round table session
with the senior vice president of global operations, the top performers
expressed frustration with the sales workflow process. Instead of maximizing
their time in front of customers, they spent inordinate amounts of time at
their desktop computers view and approving their deals.
“Bring Your Own Device” or BYOD was already popular at Cisco in the
spring of 2010 when the company’s flagship mobile app, Sales Mobile, was
launched to solve the workflow problem. The app lets sellers monitor and
manage specific account activities from their smart phones and tablets
rather than rely on their desktop computers. Other sales productivity apps
soon followed, but the company lacked a secure way to distribute them and
needed to find a solution quickly. Rather than make a significant investment
in IT infrastructure, and with time-to-market a key factor, Cisco conducted
a search for a mobile application management (MAM) vendor. The solution
had to be a secure alternative to public app stores and enable the collection
of detailed usage metrics.
“Apperian has helped us develop a level of trust with our user base and
helped foster a distinguishing aspect to our store which is critical as we
moved past the initial enablement. First impressions are everything but
you really need to keep it vital and moving forward over time.”
John Bell, Technical Program Manager , Cisco
Apperian was selected and after conducting a 200-person pilot, the company officially launched a custom-branded app store which Cisco playfully
named the “AppFridge.” Within three months, 1,700 iOS users were downloading apps from the store and by the end of that year Cisco announced
support for Android devices. By the summer of 2012, the store boasted over
9,000 subscribers, at which point the mobility team worked closely with
Apperian to roll out single sign-on to create an even more secure and
efficient user experience with the AppFridge. Today over 12,500 subscribers
use the AppFridge to access the eighth version of the flagship Sales Mobile
app and many other sales productivity apps.
The Cisco mobility program’s charter is to design and build simple, easy to
use apps to help the account teams sell. In additional to the Sales Mobile
app, there are apps that let field sales create expense reports and showcase
the value of Cisco products. All told, Mary Kay Sondecker, Cisco Mobility
Program Manager and John Bell, Cisco Technical Program Manager manage
over 40 unique apps, 30 demonstration apps and average about a dozen
apps in beta at any given time.
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The mobility program’s vision and road map are managed by sales operations, rather than IT. “This allows us to stay close to our target audience of
field sales; their feedback is critical to the evolution of the program,” says
Mary Kay Sondecker. “While IT plays a supporting role in helping us execute
against the road map, it’s the feedback of field sales that’s most relied on to
create our road map.” Because the Cisco mobile apps are so easy to use and
are completely voluntary, the mobility program spends zero dollars on end
user training. The same can be said for marketing because the program’s
most successful asset is viral marketing.
Why Apperian MAM/enterprise store to support enterprise
mobility strategy?
The AppFridge, developed on the Apperian MAM platform, allows Cisco to
facilitate a centralized approach to app distribution – one stop shopping –
which is very important for users. They don’t want to be burdened by having
to download enterprise apps from multiple locations. From an administrative perspective, Apperian enables the mobility team to securely distribute
the apps to employees (and even subsets of employees), providing a natural
gateway to enforce corporate governance and standards. “We found that
having that gateway in place has really helped us push those standards and
align apps accordingly,” says John Bell.
Users find the AppFridge easy to use, which is especially critical for a successful mobility program as users begin to experience their traditional work
processes in a mobile environment. Because public mobile apps are typically
easy to use, the bar is set high. The sales productivity apps have to be crisp,
intuitive, and packed with value, as does the store.
Apperian enables the mobility team to deliver that experience –basic search,
app categorizations, group access controls, the ability to manage and keep
inventory fresh - are all a must. “Apperian has helped us develop a level of
trust with our user base and helped foster a distinguishing aspect to our
store which is critical as we moved past the initial enablement,” notes Bell.
“First impressions are everything but you really need to keep it vital and
moving forward over time.”
Apperian provides the mobility team with baseline metrics such as log in
reports, download reports, device distribution, app level utilization. While
many of the metrics are built into the apps themselves, Apperian facilitates
visualization into basic utilization metrics at an app level. Apperian enables
the mobility team to more closely monitor app metrics and adoption rates
and provide that info to company leadership.
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Achieving MAM “Programification”
With Apperian, Cisco is able to apply very distinct branding to its app store,
something that Bell calls “programification.” This has helped with viral adoption and increased program recognition over time. Mobility can be daunting
to some users depending on their level of technical proficiency and any way
the platform can be humanized helps to engage those users that might not
be early adopters. The AppFridge shows them mobility can be easy and nonthreatening.
Apperian provides a number of ways for users to engage and receive support in the AppFridge. They can submit feedback, request support on the
apps in the Cisco portfolio, and rate the apps through the store. “This level of
engagement is often how we get ideas that end up in our roadmap for the
different apps we are managing,” notes Sondecker.
Best Practices
As a result of its experience deploying the AppFridge on the Apperian platform, Cisco’s mobility team developed what it considers best practices for
other companies developing enterprise app stores. There’s a rigorous vetting
process to determine what apps go into the store that comprises four components: audience applicability, the plan design and experience, architecture and security, and how the app will be maintained and supported once
it’s launched.
There’s an ongoing need for rapid prototyping and betas in the store, with
the most used apps refreshed on a frequent basis. The Cisco employee user
base expects rapid versioning and new capabilities in a very short time period. Apperian supports rapid version deployment for efficient cycling.
The AppFridge proactively alerts the mobility team as apps are about to
expire. Apperian automates the process of quickly re-signing apps that are
expiring and continuing their lifecycle in the store. When new mobile operating systems come along, e.g., iOS7, Apperian provides the ability to prototype the new OS while it’s in beta without disrupting the production version
of an app already in service. So when the new OS version is released, the
Cisco mobility team is ready because of all the work done behind the scenes.
“With iOS6 we saw about a 20% uptake in just the first couple of weeks of
availability, so users really jump on new operating systems making it critical
to focus on readiness across the app portfolio when changes happen,” says
Bell.
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Quantifiable Improvement in Personal Productivity
The impact of the mobile apps and AppFridge on the sales teams is demonstrable. In an annual survey conducted among users over half of the sellers
reported up to 25% increase in personal productivity as a result of Sales
Mobile and the other apps in the AppFridge. And 1 in 5 have reported up to
50% improvement in personal productivity.
“Apperian has helped us implement the process and governance necessary
to promote an efficient app lifecycle,” says Bell. “The solution provides us
with a store that’s easy to administer, supportive of a rapid time to market
and built around the sensibility of the typical app lifecycle. Incorporating
components around QA and app re-signing has gone a long way toward an
effective implementation for us.”
Cisco AppFridge Adoption Efforts by the Numbers (as of Q4 2013)
• Over 12,500 users
• Over 83% of commissionable employees – the target
audience - are using the AppFridge
• 51 are acct managers 50 of sales managers use to
approve deals
• 36% of systems engineers to download relevant apps
for work
• 21% of users are in EMEAR
• 20% are in APJC
Impact on Sales Team
The results of an annual survey conducted among AppFridge users revealed
that more than half of Cisco sellers reported a 25% increase in personal productivity as a result of access to Sales Mobile and other applications that are
available in the AppFridge. 1 in 5 reported a 50% improvement in personal
productivity.
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Challenges
The field sales organization spent too much time on their PCs
and laptops completing the sales workflow process, detracting
from face time with customers. Once sales mobility apps were
developed to improve productivity, the mobility program team
needed a secure way to manage and distribute the apps quickly.
Why
Apperian?
Cisco rapidly developed the “AppFridge” on the Apperian MAM
platform to facilitate a centralized approach to enterprise app
management and distribution. Apperian’s features make the
AppFridge easy to administer and use, providing all the simplicity and features of a public app store, with the security and
metrics the company required.
• Through viral marketing alone, more than 12,500 employees
use the AppFridge (more than 80% of commissionable
employees – the target demographic)
• More than half of field sales reports a 25% increase in productivity since the introduction of the sales mobility apps and the
AppFridge. 1 in 5 report a 50% increase.
• Testing app betas and OS upgrades are easy to facilitate
behind the scenes
• AppFridge user engagement produces input on future mobility program developments
Benefits
About Apperian
Apperian is the industry pioneer for mobile application management. Our cloudbased platform is the standard for managing corporate mobile apps and data in the
enterprise. Unlike traditional approaches, we protect and manage just what matters
most -the actual apps and data- with a seamless user experience that doesn’t require
intrusive technology on user devices. We power the world’s leading enterprise app
stores for hundreds of thousands of users.
Copyright © 2013, Apperian, Inc. All rights reserved. Apperian and EASE are trademarks of Apperian, Inc. Mobile App Protection, MAP, Mocana, and “makes apps
self-defending” are all trademarks or registered trademarks of Mocana Corporation.
All rights reserved. All other trademarks or trade names are the property of their
respective companies.
©Apperian, Inc.
info@apperian.com
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