Cisco Erp
Cisco Systems Inc.: Implementing ERP
come ride with us
your cowboys: bill atkinson denisa kubricka edmond lui georg wittenburg iman sharif
Company Background
• Founded in 1984 by two Stanford computer scientists • Became publicly traded in 1990 • Primary product is “router” • By 1997, Cisco was ranked top five companies in return on revenues and ROA in Fortune 500 • In 1998, market capitalization was over $100 billion
Markets
• Cisco was a key infrastructure supplier for the “New Economy” in the mid-90s. • That market went through a period of amazing growth since Cisco formed. • This fast growth rate was directly reflected in Cisco’s sales figures. • The future was looking bright.
Company Structure
• Three functional divisions:
– Order Entry – Finance – Manufacturing
• Initial IT Strategy:
– Let division take care of themselves. – Overall architecture is shared, enabling sharing of data.
History of IT at Cisco
• UNIX-based software package to support its core transaction processing:
– Functional areas supported: financial, manufacturing and order entry systems – Used common architecture and common databases
• Growth of Cisco resulted in scalability problems. • Cisco was the largest single costumer of that vendor, resulting in a strategic weakness.
Point Blank
• Would the software developed for a $300 million company fit the use of a $1 billion company?
Point Blank
• Why would a multi-million dollar company want to avoid ERP?
A Big Need
• Recognized the need for change, but left actions to each functional division: • Thus:
– Little progress was made in the year – Each functional area was reluctant to replace the legacy system because of high risk involved – Systems outages became routine – Unauthorized method for accessing the core application database malfunctioned, corrupting Cisco’s central database
• Company was shut down for two days
Selecting an ERP product
• The planning was driven only by timing
come ride with us
your cowboys: bill atkinson denisa kubricka edmond lui georg wittenburg iman sharif
Company Background
• Founded in 1984 by two Stanford computer scientists • Became publicly traded in 1990 • Primary product is “router” • By 1997, Cisco was ranked top five companies in return on revenues and ROA in Fortune 500 • In 1998, market capitalization was over $100 billion
Markets
• Cisco was a key infrastructure supplier for the “New Economy” in the mid-90s. • That market went through a period of amazing growth since Cisco formed. • This fast growth rate was directly reflected in Cisco’s sales figures. • The future was looking bright.
Company Structure
• Three functional divisions:
– Order Entry – Finance – Manufacturing
• Initial IT Strategy:
– Let division take care of themselves. – Overall architecture is shared, enabling sharing of data.
History of IT at Cisco
• UNIX-based software package to support its core transaction processing:
– Functional areas supported: financial, manufacturing and order entry systems – Used common architecture and common databases
• Growth of Cisco resulted in scalability problems. • Cisco was the largest single costumer of that vendor, resulting in a strategic weakness.
Point Blank
• Would the software developed for a $300 million company fit the use of a $1 billion company?
Point Blank
• Why would a multi-million dollar company want to avoid ERP?
A Big Need
• Recognized the need for change, but left actions to each functional division: • Thus:
– Little progress was made in the year – Each functional area was reluctant to replace the legacy system because of high risk involved – Systems outages became routine – Unauthorized method for accessing the core application database malfunctioned, corrupting Cisco’s central database
• Company was shut down for two days
Selecting an ERP product
• The planning was driven only by timing