Cast Study Taleka Telstra
Case Study: Sotheby’s
Sotheby’s
Case Study
Case Study: Sotheby’s
Customer Overview
Sotheby's is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and
decorative art, jewellery, real estate, and collectibles and was
founded in London in 1744. It is the world's largest art business
with global sales in 2011 totalling $5.8 billion. Sotheby's is
headquartered in New York with 90 locations in 40 countries.
The company has over 1009 employees worldwide.
Case Study: Sotheby’s
The Challenge
Sotheby's technology partner Telstra Global assisted them by finding improved ways of working
which included the roll out of a Jabber solution within the London and New York offices.
Sotheby's staff had not used a soft phone before and its introduction was to enable new work
practices to improve internal and external communication.
Case Study: Sotheby’s
The Solution
Telstra Global recognised that the new
technology may be a challenge to the staff in
an organisation that, in some respects, is very
traditional. Telstra called upon Taleka to
provide an end user adoption program for
Sotheby's staff to help them fully understand
the benefits that Jabber would bring.
Case Study: Sotheby’s
The Adoption Program
Taleka drove adoption of the Cisco Jabber platforms and video devices at Sotheby's by motivating and
training staff on how to use the tool for business-specific use cases. The ultimate goal was to help
Sotheby's to improve the collaboration experience for all employees, and potentially its customers, by
increasing utilisation of the Jabber technology and aligning the use of this technology to its broader
organisational vision.
Taleka worked with the Sotheby's project team to distinguish the main persona groups at Sotheby's for
Jabber. After surveying employees to find out more about their current collaboration practices, pain
points, Taleka held focus groups with representatives of each group to expand on the survey results and
start to map out some use cases for the technology specific to each persona.
From these focus groups, Taleka identified several specific use cases for the Jabber tools based on these
users' workflows and needs, and determined the most appropriate methods to evaluate the progress of
the users in achieving these use cases.
Taleka then designed awareness-raising communication materials and delivered in-person training to
the pilot groups, as well as supplying quick-reference guides and a User Journey video.
Case Study: Sotheby’s
The Use Cases
1
Remote Working
Sotheby's has identified the need for some staff to have the ability to work from home, both internally and
at recruitment level. Until now this has not been encouraged by the organisation. Taleka identified that by
adopting Jabber Sotheby's would make remote working possible, allow employees to work from home
regularly or from time to time, increase employee retention and offer more attractive working conditions,
decrease cost of expensive premises, and provided the ability to work from anywhere
2
Remote Expert (Finding colleagues quickly and easily for assistance)
Staff at Sotheby's struggled to know who to contact in a department, how to find their number and an
alternate number. A lot of time was being wasted calling Facilities or Assistants in order to reach the
desired contact. Taleka identified that Cisco Jabber provides users with a global Sotheby's directory,
allowing them to quickly search for a contact or a number; they can also create groups and import contacts
to customise their Jabber client
Case Study: Sotheby’s
The Outcome
These use cases were built into an adoption best practice program including training and
marketing into the Sotheby's teams in New York and London. The outcomes of this adoption
program were measured to ensure that they exceeded the improvements agreed when
defining the KPIs.
Sotheby's have now extended the internal marketing & training to other global sites and are
maximising the return on their investment in Cisco technology.