At a Glance
Aruna Ravichandran SVP & Chief Marketing and Customer Officer for Webex, CiscoFocus Areas: Marketing, Cloud, DevOps, IT Operations Thinkers360 In-Depth Profile & Portfolio: Aruna Ravichandran Books: DevOps for Digital Leaders, The Kitty Hawk Venture. Highlighted Content: Introducing the Webex app for Ford and Lincoln’s new in-vehicle digital experience, Global Hybrid Work Study | Employee Insights, In-Office Challenges, and the Role of AI. |
Thought Leader and Influencer Interview
Thinkers360 thought leader interviews profile prominent members of the Thinkers360 community who embody the power of ideas in their work. In this edition, we speak with Aruna Ravichandran, SVP & Chief Marketing and Customer Officer for Webex, Cisco.
Aruna is an industry expert on SaaS marketing and enterprise technology with over 20 years of experience in building and marketing products in various markets such as IT Operations Management, Analytics, Cloud, Data Center and financial services companies.
She has authored two pioneering books on DevOps: DevOps for Digital Leaders and The Kitty Hawk Venture, and earned numerous awards including: Top 100 The Most Influential Women in Silicon Valley 2016 by the San Jose Business Journal, and Most Powerful and Influential Woman Award by the National Diversity Council in 2016.
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Thinkers360: Tell us a bit about your background and areas of expertise.
AR: I am currently the SVP & Chief Marketing and Customer Officer for Webex by Cisco. I didn’t always know that Marketing was the path that would enable me to combine my skills and passion. I started as a computer engineer, which I excelled at and loved. However, I have always loved storytelling and found myself drawn to the customer-facing side of the business. I decided to create a new path for myself—one in which I could combine my technical engineering knowledge with my passion for storytelling and customer advocacy. From there, I began my pursuit of Marketing. Eventually, I worked my way to the position I hold now at Cisco, where I am responsible for growing a multi-billion-dollar business. I’m proud to bring over two decades of experience to my role, blending my computer engineering background with a customer-focused philosophy.
Thinkers360: What are your current responsibilities and what is your typical day like?
AR: I bridge the roles of Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Information Officer, and Chief Experience Officer for the Webex by Cisco brand. What I love most is that every day is different, and it’s exciting to tackle various projects and challenges each day.
I monitor trends across industries and customer behavior to keep the Webex brand at the forefront of innovation. My role involves leading our marketing strategy and enhancing customer experiences to drive business growth. This requires cross-functional collaboration to ensure our messaging and product development are aligned and market-responsive.
One of my top priorities is fostering an inclusive culture. I take team mentorship and professional growth seriously, conducting regular team rituals where we celebrate diverse perspectives and integrate them into our decision-making processes. I’m a strong advocate for diversity panels and initiatives, striving for broader representation within the tech industry. This commitment to inclusivity is not just a professional duty, but a personal passion. I also believe in infusing empathy into Webex’s culture, as I see technology not just as a tool to connect us but also as a reflection of the diversity of its users.
One of my greatest passions is inspiring the next generation, particularly girls, to pursue STEM careers. Through my work at Webex and on my personal time, I speak at high schools and other institutions to encourage a new generation to pursue STEM. By nurturing this passion, I hope to contribute to a more inclusive and diverse tech industry.
Thinkers360: How do you see the future of work evolving over the next 3 to 5 years?
AR: I believe AI will significantly impact the future of the workplace in the next 3 to 5 years. As employees increasingly come back to the office, there is an enormous opportunity to leverage AI to enhance productivity and deliver simplicity.
AI will revolutionize the way we work, making it easier, faster, and more efficient. By automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks, it allows us to focus on more complex and creative work. Video and audio intelligence capabilities will help ensure everyone is able to participate equally when they collaborate, regardless of where or how they work. For example, solutions like noise removal and voice optimization help workers to be clearly heard without disruptive background noise. The use and integration of AI-enhanced technologies like these will make collaboration more personalized and efficient. We are continuously finding more ways to leverage AI to improve experiences for our customers and our employees, and what we’ve done recently is just the start.
Thinkers360: What are some of the latest trends in remote work specifically?
AR: According to our Global Hybrid Work study, which was conducted across 19 countries, global employers are mandating a full or partial return to office right now. But employee expectations have dramatically shifted. People have realized they can do their individual work from anywhere, so they expect the office to support the new office experience—one that supports collaboration, brainstorming, and building a community.
Even with the return to the office, we know that remote work isn’t going away. In fact, 98% of meetings will include at least one remote participant. Therefore, transforming offices into experience centers that support collaboration virtually and in person will be critical for maintaining a hybrid workforce now and in the future.
Creating collaborative, inclusive environments will enable organizations and teams to be more productive, attract and retain talent, and make hybrid work, work. At the heart of supportive hybrid work strategies is AI. It’s the biggest trend across the spectrum of work styles and locations that is supporting more efficient processes, improving communication, and fostering inclusion, all while helping organizations measure and manage their most crucial initiatives effectively and with actionable insights.
However, successful hybrid work strategies are dependent on the organization’s culture and what works for their business, their employees, and their customers. Frankly, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to hybrid work.
Editor’s Note: See Aruna Ravichandran‘s Thinkers360 profile to contact her directly.
Thinkers360: What’s your advice for companies who have a mix of traditional (where in-office may be required) and tech workers (where there’s more flexibility)? How should they be thinking about their remote work policies?
AR: The role of the office has changed and continues to do so. People now want to come into the office to collaborate, not to work by themselves because we’ve shown that most, if not all, individual work can be done remotely. At Cisco, we believe that the office must be a magnet, not a mandate. This requires a reimagination of the workspace.
For too many companies, the hybrid meeting experience is broken. For example, when a group meets in a conference room and one remote employee joins the meeting, it gets hard for the remote participant to feel included. The remote employee may not see or hear everyone clearly, pick up on facial expressions and body language, or participate in whiteboarding. People shouldn’t feel excluded just because they’re not physically in the room.
Organizations should seek to video enable every space, create the feeling of really being in the room even when you’re not using modern video devices that are purpose-built for each workspace, and digitize the workplace to create great employee experiences while also gaining intelligent data that helps measure and manage various outputs.
Making people feel like they’re really in the room when they’re joining remotely is about providing the richness and context of in-person interaction, even in virtual settings. At Webex, we seek to provide that with AI-powered technology that can focus on individuals in the room, capture the best angle of participants at any moment, or give every participant their own frame.
Organizations also need to modernize their workspaces to optimize them for effective hybrid meetings – everything from the devices to the space layouts, furniture, and even environmental controls. They need the infrastructure to provide the bandwidth and performance that hybrid meetings demand. And, everything needs to work together holistically, with IT having end-to-end visibility so they can ensure the best user experience for everyone and gain critical business insights.
Thinkers360: How is AI playing a role in the workplace today and how do you expect it to evolve in the future?
AR: To give a personal example, I’ve had to miss a meeting or drop early from a meeting to attend to conflicting priorities. AI helps me stay informed on what I’ve missed, what was decided in meetings, actions I need to take, and more. Specifically, our Webex AI Assistant uses generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) for use cases like these. Our Assistant can also automatically generate chapters within meeting recordings and create short highlight reels. It allows everyone to get to the most critical information faster. But we’ve done something at Webex that we think will really benefit workplaces and teams.
Until now, most solutions have focused only on language. But there’s so much more that goes into communication than just the words we use. Things like gestures, the tone of your voice, or whether someone stepped out of the meeting and for how long. All of this can add more texture and context to the interactions than you might be getting from a large language model.
That’s why we developed our Real-time Media Models. With Real-time Media Models, we can recognize audio and video cues. For example, we can recognize when someone steps away from a meeting, and when you get back, we can give you a summary of what you missed in real-time. Our RMM will also pick up on gestures and emojis given during a meeting. We can include this detail in meeting transcripts and summaries as well, so everyone can see the full context of the meeting. Not only are you able to see what was said, but you are also able to pick up on the sentiments, feelings, and reactions of the team.
By helping you understand not just what was discussed but whether the meeting was effective and whether all parties were aligned, AI will significantly enhance hybrid collaboration to ensure an inclusive and productive experience for everyone.
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