Tropo, A Part Of Cisco, Leverages Built.io Flow To Integrate With Cisco Tools And Processes

THE CHALLENGE

Tropo, a startup acquired by Cisco in 2015, had to adapt to new processes and begin to use Cisco tools quickly. Until being acquired, Laura Giles, Cloud Integrations & Automation Consulting Systems Engineer at Cisco, and her team relied on manual file dumps, scheduled tasks, and database transactions to manage workflows and keep disparate teams in constant communication. However, these processes were slow and inefficient, while outward-facing communication suffered, too. Sales leads were sent to email, where they sat unread for days – sometimes weeks – at a time. When a contact was on vacation or the message went to the wrong address, it could take even longer to get a response.

Cisco’s newly acquired team needed a better way to communicate with clients and with each other, along with a faster, more reliable system for making sure information would get to the right people at the right time.

Further, it needed a workflow and collaboration system that could handle its new parent company’s massive scale and conform to its existing processes. So the team sought to combine Cisco Spark with a toolset that was intuitive to use, yet sophisticated enough to allow for the custom workflow requirements.

Though there were some simple, consumer facing workflow systems out there, none of them had the ability to tackle the tasks Cisco’s teams needed. Then the team discovered Built.io Flow, a new Cisco-approved integration tool.

THE SOLUTION

Utilizing Built.io Flow, Cisco’s new team was able to build systems that functioned seamlessly with the software and processes already in place. New users were able to start creating custom workflows to automate and accelerate important processes instantly and with little or no training. Instead of being limited by a fixed list of integrations, the group could incorporate new integrations to build and customize workflows. This flexibility and scalability allowed every team to build out the system to suit their specific needs, without laborious hand coding. Further, they could start building workflows in minutes, and changes were just as easy and instantaneous all thanks to the integration with Cisco Spark and Built.io’s drag and drop integration solution.

1. The instant setup and intuitive design cut downtime and eliminated delays.
2. What used to take weeks or months now takes just a few minutes to create.
3. Every workflow can be customized and new integrations added on-demand.

THE RESULTS

The combination of Built.io Flow and Cisco Spark proved incredibly powerful. Having a centralized location for all communication and an integration tool meant that the team could enable data to pass from Tropo’s old tools and services into Cisco’s enterprise-grade solutions. It also meant Tropo could integrate with any new product, service, or device it needed to build and iterate on new workflows. This combination enabled the team to continuously improve day-to-day operations, while simultaneously merging business processes quickly and without disruption within its new parent company.

Not only did day-to-day operations become more efficient, but the communication within and between teams improved dramatically. Important notifications are no longer buried in email inboxes, but instead delivered instantly to the right person. Sales teams are now able to respond to leads just minutes after an inbound request, and automated workflows help teams obtain better, richer, more accurate information than ever before.

By using Built.io Flow and Cisco Spark together, Cisco was able to simultaneously boost productivity while reducing costs.