Cisco Cisco Workplace Portal for Cisco Tidal Enterprise Scheduler Data Sheet
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Business Results
Several results demonstrate that this scheduler is helping the company become more efficient. From better
invoicing and crediting, to faster reporting, to easier planning and development, the scheduler is delivering results.
The Cisco solution makes the verification of sales contracts with customer orders a smoother single flow that
occurs in coordination with product dispatches and invoicing windows. The company now reaps the benefits of this
approach because it issues about 30 to 40 percent fewer credits annually.
Orders can now be compared to customer contracts before invoicing deadlines, so that the invoices reflect
contracted pricing information. Reducing the number of credits saves the company and its customers time and
reduces costs.
Another example is more efficient business reporting. Previously, the reports were good but required more time,
planning, and monitoring to complete than they do now. Sales and marketing managers are pleased to consistently
have reliable reports, and even Cognos cubes available right when they arrive at work, without any waiting. They
are also pl
eased at IT’s ability to respond to new or spontaneous reporting needs more quickly than before.
Another result has been more efficient planning due to better visibility and control. Prior to Cisco Tidal Enterprise
Scheduler, staff members had to estimate the time needed for each process and build a cushion to accommodate
unforeseeable circumstances. For example, they had to set a processing window of about four hours for end-of-
day jobs to accommodate the processes, as well as administration and monitoring time. Cisco Tidal Enterprise
Scheduler has reduced that window to about one hour. That time savings is because staff members do not have to
estimate or schedule jobs at predefined intervals of time.
Staff knows exactly what jobs are running when and how long they take, because users can see job status anytime
and get job execution data that can be used for planning. Users no longer have to schedule jobs at predefined
intervals, because jobs can be linked together in a sequence of gapless dependencies that the scheduler executes
one after the other, resulting in a faster flow than before. Additionally, IT personnel can plan in less time for
unforeseeable circumstances, because they get advance alerts to potential problems from the scheduler, which
keeps a watch on factors such as system availability or long-running jobs. Plus, job failures have been reduced by
about 50 percent and the team has early notification of them, so staff can begin the resolution process sooner than
in the past. Points of failure are also easier to pinpoint, so that the entire process does not have to restart and
instead can begin at the point just prior to the problem.
As a special bonus, the solution contributes to employee satisfaction, because it makes daily tasks easier for IT
personnel and frees some time. Daily users particularly like the enterprise scheduling model, because it gives them
the ability to use job grouping functions and dependencies to build job logic that reflects the business requirements,
regardless of disparate systems involved in the processes.
Daily users say that the product makes it easier for them to maintain their technical understanding of the entire job
processing environment, which allows them to quickly respond to business rule changes.
“Cisco Tidal Enterprise Scheduler helps us to be very proactive. This is
particularly important in an environment where job dependencies are
complex and so tied to the bottom line.”
particularly important in an environment where job dependencies are
complex and so tied to the bottom line.”
— IT Representative for CSBP