Nothing is more rewarding for our Customer Experience team than recognizing our customers' success. Each year at Cisco Live Melbourne, we highlight a group of innovative customers with our Cisco CX Customer Hero Awards.

Each customer who receives an award has demonstrated excellence in their category. Each one was selected from a host of nominations received across various industries within the APJC region. Needless to say, these awards are competitive. I am honored to showcase this year's winners, please join me in congratulating them!

World Class Cybersecurity: East Japan Railway Company

This award is presented to a customer who has partnered with Cisco Services to successfully strengthen its security and proactively protect and defend its IT infrastructure. The winner is East Japan Railway Company, which needs to protect multiple systems including station staff terminals, networks, and ticketing systems. Through a combination of Cisco security products and Cisco CX the company has experienced no outages due to security issues this year. Yoshihiro Sekiguchi, Deputy Director of the Security Countermeasures Office of the ICT Infrastructure Headquarters, and his team have implemented efficient SOC operations with 250 billion sessions and 400 billion records and reduced the time to prepare reports required by government ministries.

Hisashi Ishikawa of Cisco accepts the award on behalf of East Japan Railway Company

Exceptional Innovation: Hana Bank

The Exceptional Innovation Award is for a Cisco customer who achieved amazing innovations through collaboration with Cisco CX. This year's winner is Hana Bank, who ranked number one in customer experience and revenue in 2024 while providing innovative digital platforms to provide reliable financial services 365 days per year.  Kyoojin Shin, Director of Cloud Division, and his team worked with Cisco Customer Experience and achieved 100 percent of their initial digital transformation objectives within one year, including SDN conversion and data center expansion. In addition, they succeeded in accelerating their next migration project by one full year, all while automating multiple major changes and increasing their overall work efficiency by 50 percent.

Jungsoo Park accepts the award on behalf of Hana Bank!

Outstanding Automation: KDDI

The Outstanding Automation Award goes to a customer who partnered with Cisco CX to dramatically improve IT operations through automation. The winner is Japanese telecommunications service provider KDDI. Through collaboration with Cisco customer success, Takumi Nakamatsu, Architect of IP/MPLS Backbone, and his team at KDDI are transforming and modernizing network operations by combining generative AI and Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO). They are also working to remove manual tasks and simplify pre-deployment tests with the goal of reducing total manual tasks by more than 50 percent.

Please join us in congratulatingTakumi Nakamatsuand his team at KDDI!

Digital Transformation Luminary: Hong Kong Jockey Club

Our Digital Transformation Luminary Award is presented to a customer who has successfully embraced an impressive digital transformation through a partnership with Cisco CX. This year the award goes to the Hong Kong Jockey Club, a world-class racing club with businesses including Racing, Betting & Entertainment, Membership and Charities. Committed to modernizing their network infrastructure with future-facing capabilities, Gary Delooze, Executive Director, IT, and his team have partnered with Cisco to create a transformational solution based on Cisco ACI+SDWAN+SDA technologies. Through this transformation journey, The Club is going to have a more scalable, secure and resilient infrastructure that can accommodate its future growth, serving millions of customers and conducting billions of transactions every year. Gary's team is also collaborating with Cisco CX team on observability solutions to enhance the ability to detect and respond to incidents, safeguard the services and enhance the digital experiences of the Club's members and customers.

Flora Fang, Managing Director, CX Greater China, of Cisco accepts the award on behalf of Hong Kong Jockey Club!

Operational Excellence: LG CNS

Our Operational Excellence Award goes to a customer realizing tangible and compelling outcomes using Success Tracks. This year, that award goes to LG CNS, a leader in digital transformation and digital business innovation, providing services to a wide variety of companies. LG CNS maintains "LG-Net," the MPLS-based backbone network providing connectivity services to all LG subsidiaries. Through collaboration with Cisco CX, Young Mi Lee, VP Head of Cloud Network Business Division, and her team provide is the highest quality of network services while minimizing disruption.

Hyung Guk Kim of LG CNS accepts the award 

AI Trailblazer: HCLTech

The AI Trailblazer is a customer who partnered with Cisco CX to prepare its infrastructure for AI. The winner is HCLTech, a global technology company that provides services and products to help businesses transform digitally. Mr. Ramana SV and his Global IT (GIT) team at HCLTech were looking to revolutionize the wireless infrastructure with Cisco Wireless Solutions, AI Enhanced RRM, and Wireless Assurance. Together, HCLTech, Cisco CX & Customer Success automated the entire deployment, future-proofed the network with Wi-Fi 6E technology, and leveraged AI-Enhanced Radio Resource Management (RRM) and AI Ops to optimize wireless configurations. Now, HCLTech has seamless Wi-Fi coverage across multiple Campuses / facilities, with a huge performance boost, and a significant reduction in implementation time, setting new benchmarks for user experience with strengthened security. Join me in congratulating HCLTech, GIT Team on winning this year's AI Trailblazer Award!

Harish Kelath accepts the award on behalf of HCLTech

Industry Accelerator: Niterra

This award goes to a customer that is leading innovation in its industry. The winner is Niterra, a major manufacturer of automotive ignition parts and vehicle electronic components. Niterra wanted to modernize its infrastructure to be able to respond to rapidly changing business needs and to protect factories from the growing threat of cyber attacks.  Kazuyuki Kimura and his team at Niterra, together with Cisco CX, have completed a Cyber Vision Assessment to develop a more advanced, flexible and secure Operational Technology (OT) infrastructure. IT and OT are increasingly separated and they are moving toward a new IT infrastructure with visibility and optimal security threat protection.

Itaru Urikura, Cisco Customer Delivery Security Architect, accepts the award on behalf of Niterra

CX Customer Hero of the Year Award: Coles 

This pinnacle CX award goes to the customer who has achieved the strongest overall business outcomes through collaboration with Cisco CX. The winner is Coles Supermarkets, a national full-service supermarket retailer with more than 1,800 retail outlets across Australia. Hong-Sin Lim and his team partnered with Cisco CX to improve and optimize network operations at Coles, greatly enhancing team members' experience, reducing time to resolve issues, and decreasing risk to key applications in the supermarkets. Key outcomes include:

• 99% network uptime in LAN and WAN environments over the past year enabling  an "Always on and Secure" network for supermarket stores
• Simplified monitoring and baselines of supermarket stores
• 50% improved resolution time with HTEC team due to focus on critical issues
• 300% improvement in time to triage perceived wi-fi issues and allocate issues to appropriate team
• Automation of software upgrade is expected to significantly reduce time for OS upgrade, improving productivity and freeing up employee time for more innovative projects
• Proactive monitoring using a single dashboard helps to quickly identify issues and has reduced time to remediate by more than 50%

Please join us in congratulating Hong-Sin Lim and his team at Coles!

Explore our Cisco CX Superheroes Today

To learn more about our customer heroes and their stories, visit our Customer Stories Index -a catalog of stories highlighting how Cisco services customers are transforming and innovating to drive impact in their organizations and across the world.

See some of our most recent stories here:

• NYC Health + Hospitals -Setting new standards in the United States' largest municipal health care delivery system.
• Workday -Enhancing consistency, security, and faster deployments with automation
• United Airlines -Taking the passenger experience to new heights with Agent on Demand

If you want to share your customer story, connect with us at [email protected]. We'd love to hear from you! Stay tuned for more CX updates!

Don't have a story to tell just yet? We can help you build it!