Cisco Systems, Inc.: Implementing Erp

Case Analysis

Cisco Systems, Inc.: Implementing ERP

(Draft)

Date: April 2, 2012

Table of Contents

1. Executive Summary 3

2. Case Synopsis 4

3. Cisco's Business Model, Goals and Strategy 5

4. Analysis of Problems Encountered by Cisco 6

Firm Based Value Chain Model 6

Model Application 6

Implementation Opportunity Analysis 6

Implementation Effectiveness 6

5. Conclusion 7

References 8

1. Executive Summary

An executive summary of 100 words that summarizes the purpose of your paper, the key issue and situation in the case, your conclusion and recommendation as revealed in the entire report and a table of contents (10 points).

This paper will analyze Cisco System Inc.'s company goals and strategies toward meeting its growing demand and maintain the quality support for its products. Cisco's unparalleled and rapid growth in its product demand made it a dominant player in the market. Along with its rapid growth in the market Cisco needed to grow its capabilities to conduct such large the business and support its products and customers. Further growth in Cisco's market cap was less than happening with its UNIX based software and infrastructure, rather, the system was unable support anymore load. <MORE - CONCLUSION & RECOMMENDATION>

Cisco should continue to be innovative in order to remain competitive and keep up with the changing technology. It should continue to use Oracle as its ERP vendor. At the first phase of ERP implementation, Cisco could have used effective QA team and performance QA testing software to test big volumes of data and accept flexibility for modifications.

2. Case Synopsis

Founded in 1984 by two Stanford computer scientists Cisco Systems sold Routers and soon became a publically traded company in 1990. Its market capitalization grew over $100 Billion by 1998 after it was ranked in top 5 companies in 1997.

In 1993, Cisco $500 million business was supported by UNIX based software served the Order Entry, Finance and Manufacturing divisions. The application did not provide the degree of scalability and customization needed to support the growth of Cisco.

Peter Solvik, CIO, recognized the need for a change in the software but initially left it up to the departments to take action in their own way. Little progress was made as each of the departments did not want to take the risk involved in change on their own and continued to band aid the system and tweaked it in undesirable ways that corrupted central database. A large scale two day outage was the defining moment for the company to take big and daring action to fix it once and for all.

The CIO pulled the best business and IT people out of their jobs and partnered with KPMG and set out in the hunt of an ERP solution to select Oracle based on its manufacturing capabilities, long term commitment to develop functionalities and its flexibility of being close by. The implementation was planned for 9 months period because it was neither too short not too long of a time and also to avoid interference with the annual accounting period.

At $15 million, the cost of the project was approved with stark warning and full support by the board and CEO. With the top level execs from Oracle, KPMG and Cisco on the steering committee, CIO