Cisco Cisco Wireless Control System Version 4.0 Folheto
Customer Case Study
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Global Benefits Provider Improves Employee Mobility
and Productivity
and Productivity
Unum used the Cisco Unified Wireless Network Solution to streamline meetings, enhance
training, and increase employee mobility.
Business Challenge
Unum, formerly UnumProvident, is a leading
provider of employee benefits products and
services, covering more than 25 million people in
the United States and the United Kingdom. The
Unum Group and its subsidiary companies
encompass a global workforce of 10,000 employees
and provided more than US$6 billion in benefits in
2006.
With so many products and lines of business to
support, vendor meetings and internal conferences
are a large part of day-to-day business for Unum
employees. In a perfect world, visiting vendors and
employees would be able to prepare their materials
a few minutes beforehand and start meetings on
time, and employees would return to their regular
duties on schedule. Unfortunately, reality rarely
cooperated.
“Our conference rooms were not designed with network connectivity in mind, and we have had
issues providing access,” says Dan Collyer, director, Unum IT Communications Services. “We had
groups carrying low-cost hubs and switches into meeting rooms and dropping patch cords all over
the room to accommodate their needs for network access.”
“We have a lot of meetings and vendor presentations, and it was very time consuming for our
network staff to try to connect everyone,” says Jim Dotson, senior communications engineer,
Unum IT Communications Services. “Often, meetings would be as much as 30 minutes late
because people were scrambling to get everyone connected.”
In addition to providing network access for meetings, the company also wanted to find a better way
to keep employees connected to their e-mail and essential business applications during training
sessions. This need was particularly acute during new product rollouts, when employees might
need to be away from their desks for many hours.
“When we have large quarterly meetings, managers really want employees to be there
participating,” says Gemree Fe de Leon, communications analyst, Unum. “Employees needed to
be able to multitask and monitor their jobs during the meetings, but it was very difficult to provide
everyone with connectivity.”
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
UNUM
●
Financial Services
●
Chattanooga, Tennessee, United States
●
10,000 employees
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
●
Improve ability of employees and vendors to
connect to business applications during
meetings
meetings
●
Reduce costs and effort required to support
employee training sessions
●
Increase overall employee productivity and
collaboration
NETWORK SOLUTION
●
Deployed secure wireless network to extend
network access to conference rooms and
throughout the business campus
throughout the business campus
BUSINESS RESULTS
●
Faster, easier connectivity during meetings
●
Streamlined training session setup and
support
●
Increased employee collaboration and
connectedness