Corporate Silos are the Nemesis of Collaborative Decisions

A recent study analyzed more than 100 million emails and 60 million calendar entries from a 100,000-employee company over three months. The results are interesting. When two people were in the same business unit, function, and office, they interacted 1,000 times more often than two people in otherwise similar roles, but different units.

This is an important finding. Consider that 64% of private-sector digital value at stake is tied to people-centric connections.The technologies mainly used for employees to collaborate today—such as email—are often aligned to the traditional organizational structure, communication dynamics, and decision-making processes in the hierarchy of the organization. As a result, they are not set up to leverage the convergence of digital technology, including the Internet of Things and collaboration platforms, to unlock knowledge from email inboxes and stored away on hard drives.

It can’t unlock knowledge from email inboxes and stored away on hard drives. How siloed is communication in your organization?

Today’s business calls for simplifying information flow and idea sharing among teams. Cisco Spark provides room- and team-based messaging with content sharing and video. People create virtual spaces where they can message, meet, and call via text, voice, or video.

For many industries, neglecting to adopt new digital technologies for employee productivity translates to abandoning significant opportunity. Let’s take manufacturing. Cisco estimates that 33% of digital value at stake in manufacturing is tied to employee productivity.

Adopting mobility (BYOD), telecommuting, and video collaboration alone can translate to a 35% gain in knowledge-worker productivity, while reducing business travel up to 17%.

What digital value are you leaving on the table? Don’t let it become your nemesis.

Join us at Cisco Live to see how your business can benefit from Cisco Spark. See how we’re making it easier than ever to deploy and use our collaboration portfolio.