As Cisco Americas Financial Services Lead, it is a great privilege and a lot of fun to meet and talk with IT and business decision-makers from many of our Bank, Insurance and Wealth clients in the U.S., Canada and Latin America at Cisco's Customer Experience Centers ("CXC"), and virtually over Webex. We continue to see high demand to collaboratively engage in substantive digital transformation strategy conversations, including transforming financial services, digital acceleration trends and strategies, Cisco Investments Ecosystem and Innovation, hybrid work, customer journey, operational excellence, security, risk mitigation and compliance, application monitoring and enabling the cloud edge.

Turning change into a competitive advantage is necessary for survival in today's digital economy. To deliver a successful briefing experience with the greatest tangible value to our customers, it is fundamentally important to confirm client goals and expectations prior to and during every briefing. Briefings are targeted to guests' specific business needs -customers set the agenda. Mutually agree and have a clear understanding as voice of the customer -What are your top IT and business objectives? What is our action plan and tangible next steps to partner together? What does success look like following today's briefing? What was valuable to you and what would you like to learn more about?

Here are the top recurring themes I am seeing with our customers from in-person and on virtual briefings-do these resonate with your institution?

• Cisco Cloud strategy, modern/hybrid workplace, collaboration, and security vision
• Strategize on next steps to move to the cloud with Cisco to optimize Cloud calling and mitigate increase in voice fraud
• How Cisco works with other financial institutions, business growth and what are innovative solutions available and relevant for financial institutions
• Day-in-the-life customer experience and workforce productivity demos
• Security, banking as a service (BaaS), crypto, and what other financial institutions are doing when it comes to innovation
• What Cisco is doing to help innovate and grow financial institutions, including data center, Webex Calling and conversational engagement best practices
• Cisco's vision for the enterprise and for financial services, major trends impacting enterprise today, and how we can help financial institutions enable and transform their business
• Better understand future cloud infrastructure product direction, and IT transformation and infrastructure to position for aggressive enterprise growth
• Use cases and real-world examples of how Cisco is partnering with customers to overcome challenges faced by all organizations today, including cloud, sustainability, compute, networking, collaboration and security
• Extending technology to the field -hybrid work, Cisco collaboration, cloud migration, cloud security architecture
• Operationalizing the U.S. and global footprint -protecting the WAN

Here are three options to consider to help identify current and future business needs, exchange ideas with Cisco experts and ecosystem partners, and talk about how to leverage technology to achieve Enterprise business goals:

1. In-person executive briefing.A visit to a Cisco CXC, including San Jose, New York City (Penn 1 Plaza), Atlanta, Chicago and Toronto, provides state-of-the art facilities and capabilities for briefings and demonstrations to partners and customers. Meet with Cisco executives and subject-matter-experts to discuss current challenges, business solutions and future transformations through Cisco capabilities. IT professionals presenter the demos at the CXC locations. According to Jane Riad, Director, Global Cisco Experience Centers, on the experience:

We place high value on executive briefings because it gives us the ability to connect deeply with customers, to understand their goals, and work together on innovative solutions. Just about every time a customer meets with us at any of our Cisco Experience Centers around the world, they leave feeling excited and inspired about the possibilities we uncover.
-Jane Riad, Director, Global Cisco Experience Centers

2. Virtual executive briefing.With operating expenses a challenge in today's budgetary environment, some of our customers opt for a virtual format over Webex, with supporting technologies including Slido during conversations for a more engaging experience.

3. One-to-many customer event. Financial institutions are increasingly interested in peer-to-peer strategic discussions to talk and learn about customer advocacy, key industry developments, strengthening relationships, lessons learned and innovation ideas for competitive differentiation. Our customers are realizing value in multi-customer events, both in-person and virtually.

Cisco is committed to helping organizations of all sizes become more agile and maintain a competitive advantage in the digital economy. Please contact your account manager or reach out to Cisco for executive briefing opportunities relevant to your organization.

Great things start with a conversation! We invite you to come experience the best of Cisco-virtually and on site:

Cisco Experience Center