Embracing hybrid transformation across a growing enterprise.

Like most companies, Broadridge started small. When it first opened shop in 1962—then known as the ADP Brokerage Services Group—the business processed 300 trades per night for its one and only client.

Now one of the world’s leading fintech providers, the company handles millions of trades totalling more than a trillion dollars in transactions daily. But, according to UC Architect Jonathan Belfiore, that’s just scratching the surface of what Broadridge is up to.

“What we do is always an interesting question because we’re involved in so many financial services,” he said. “The best way to describe us is that if you own stocks, receive statements, or vote in shareholder meetings, chances are that’s coming from a Broadridge system.” 

As a global organization, Broadridge has over 17,000 associates across 44 offices—many of whom are working remotely. Luckily, despite its many changes over the years, the business has always kept one eye on the horizon. 

In today’s distributed environment, it’s easy to take hybrid work for granted. It wasn’t too long ago that most enterprises were only beginning to embrace work-from-anywhere policies. But, by the time the COVID-19 pandemic began, Broadridge was well on its way to a hybrid-first setup.

“We’ve always had a hybrid work strategy,” Belfiore explained. “I’ve been working at Broadridge since 2012, and even back then we had Cisco Instant Connect, and people could work from home one day a week.”

Shortly thereafter, Broadridge rolled out Cisco Expressway and Cisco Jabber. This enabled executives to keep desk phones in their homes. Fast-forward another few years, and the company took another step toward hybrid collaboration when Belfiore began implementing Webex solutions.

“We became a big Webex Meetings shop,” he said. “Most of our users were dialing into meetings with a five-digit dial. But very few people turned their webcam on, so we wanted to transform that experience for our associates.” 

Belfiore and his team decided to transition from an audio-focus to a video-first policy. They created video collaboration rooms using Cisco Board Series — a series of integrated collaboration systems that are ideal for video conferencing, presentations, and digital whiteboarding. As fate would have it, the team completed this project just one month before the pandemic began. Fortunately, Broadridge was ready.

“At the end of the day we knew hybrid work was here to stay years before the pandemic,” Belfiore said. “The only thing the pandemic did was accelerate it full-throttle into the future.” 

The company’s foresight paid off big. Once associates were told to work from home, Broadridge relied on the Webex Suite of products. By split-tunneling traffic, Webex solutions did not overload the VPN or data centers—effectively shifting to remote-first without ever skipping a beat.

Old habits die hard, and for Broadridge employees, the transition took some getting used to. Because they were already in the habit of picking up their phones and dialing into conferences, this behavior continued when they implemented Webex Meetings, thus creating an echo. Ultimately, Belfiore said this experience taught him how important adoption is to a successful transformation.

“Technology is great, but it falls flat if your associates and end users don’t know how to use it,” he added. “It ultimately comes down to trust and identifying what their needs are. And, at the end of the day, they don't actually care about the technology they’re using. They just care that you’re going to make them successful, and Webex enables us to do that easily and seamlessly.”

Belfiore ensures that Broadridge's many business units meet regularly with the Webex Customer Success team. These sessions allow teams to understand how they can best take advantage of the Webex Suite—a process he believes builds a more trusting relationship to the product. Plus, because users are more comfortable with the tools at hand, they’re less likely to seek out other solutions and increase shadow IT costs.

One way Broadridge has leveraged its new technology is to make on-demand training available to users who can’t attend sessions as they happen. Using Webex Webinars and Webex's Vidcast video messaging, the company is making predoctored videos and sharing them with clients at scale, then using metrics to better understand how they’re engaging with the content.

“It’s not just about the in-person and hybrid experience from a meetings perspective,” Belfiore explained. “It’s about meeting everybody how they want to be met no matter the platform—and Webex enables us to do that.”

Interoperability is especially important to Broadridge. As a company that’s grown out of a series of acquisitions, it’s essential to have a comprehensive solution that can easily scale across an evolving IT infrastructure. With every acquisition, there’s also a swarm of new users that need to be comfortable using your technology.

“Being acquired is not a fun time,” Belfiore added. “It’s important to build the bridge and make sure they know you’re listening to them and their needs. It also helps that the Webex Suite of products is very easy to use and covers almost all their needs from a collaboration standpoint.”

As a naturally forward-thinking business, Broadridge is no stranger to innovation. Since implementing cloud-based collaboration tools, Belfiore and his team have opened the door for new, more accessible, and cost-effective experiences. 

“As a Webex Suite customer, we have access to Webex Calling in the cloud,” he said. “Currently, we have an on-premise infrastructure that has a significant cost to run on our own data centers. But, with Webex Calling, we’re able to run that in Cisco’s infrastructure. We can spin down our own data center footprint at a cost savings and meet our customers anywhere they need to be.”

After a recent acquisition, Broadridge decided to deploy Webex Calling to its new users, who have a global customer base. Because it’s a cloud-based solution, this enabled them to meet with customers across North America, EMEA, and APAC without having to scale up data centers or increase their costs.

Belfiore is especially excited by the company’s new artificial intelligence capabilities, which he says will play an essential role in their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) strategy. 

“Broadridge is a global company, so you can’t assume that everybody speaks English,” he explained. “That’s why real-time translation is a key cornerstone, because whether they’re using Webex Calling or Webex Meetings, they’re able to leverage transcriptions in real time to communicate with anybody that speaks any language.”

According to Chris D’Amato, Vice President of Technical Services, these tools—alongside a suite of integrated Cisco Collaboration Devices—have helped them reimagine their office spaces. “What we love is the simplicity of it all,” he said. “You walk into a conference room, and 10 people are there, another 20 on the screen—but it’s all the same team.”

D’Amato added that having a platform-agnostic environment is especially important. Allowing users to join other vendor meetings has proven dividends, and even empowered sales and marketing teams to meet with more customers. And the best part? With Control Hub, a centralized dashboard for the entire Webex Suite, he gains enhanced visibility into system performance.

“Through Control Hub, we’re tracking metrics on telephony, conference room hours, chat messages between associates, and meeting minutes,” he said. “We’re able to provide these metrics to our senior leadership team to demonstrate the value these tools are bringing to the table.”

Get in touch with our team today to learn more about how Webex can improve collaboration and customer experience at your organization.