Soon after starting at Cisco Systems 11 years ago as a portfolio manager, Roger Biscay noticed that treasury faced too many "fire drills" when specific information had to be gathered quickly from across the company's global operations. It didn't take long to realize that "it would be more effective to have an individually customized, internal site to provide updated information on a collaborative basis for key users, so we could focus on our jobs rather than spending valuable time pulling data together," says Biscay, now Cisco's treasurer and vice president.

In the next 10 years, Cisco's treasury built an internal Web site, as well as online tools for aggregating and reporting data and facilitating staff collaboration. The applications didn't communicate well, however, and users often had to access multiple applications to complete tasks.

Enter Integrated Workforce Experience (IWE), which Cisco implemented about 18 months ago to replace those tools for senior executives. The treasury beta-tested IWE in late 2009, and it is now being rolled out across the company. One of Cisco's banks is now beta-testing IWE as a future commercial product, to be called Quad.