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co System, Inc: Implementing E

About CISCO

Established in 1984
Primary product was Router
In 1997 entered into elite club of fortune 500
Among top 5 companies in return on investment and in return on assets
Exceptional growth in 1998 as companies market capitalization passed $100 billion mark

(15 times 1997 sales)

Financial year divided into four quarters starting from 1st August

IT Department at CISCO

Pete Solvik joined as CIO in January 1993

Running a Unix based software package to support core operating and transactional
process of the company
Package was majorly supporting three functional areas
o Financials
o Manufacturing
o Order Entry
Biggest customer of the software vendor

WHY ERP

Company was able to sustain an annual growth rate of 80% and legacy system was not

able to handle such load

Frequent system outages
Due to inability of system to perform a workaround caused corruption of database which
resulted in SHUT DOWN OF COMPANY for two days

This was the defining moment for the company as after this top management decided to
implement ERP. About a month after the shutdown they created a team to do an investigation to
replace the application.

IMPLEMENTATION OF ERP APPROACH

1) Selection of an ERP Product
Major decision which they took and reason behind that:
Gauarv Singh

12120

ERP 2

a) Whom to give responsibility from company

i.
It was critically important project
ii.
Requires heavy involvement from business community to make project successful
iii.
DECISION CISCO management pulled out very vest people from their team
to do the work
b) How and how many partner to select from Industry
i.
There help was needed for the decision of selection and implementation of
ii.
iii.

software
Great technical skills and industry knowledge was must
DECISION Chose KPMG as integration partner. KPMG gave their best
people for this project. i.e. Program manager for this project was their director of

IT.
c) Which software to select
i.
One of the most important decision
ii.
Approach
i. Took help from large corporates
ii. Guidance of research sources like Gartner group
iii. By tapping existing user of package
iii.
Vendor selection process
i. Systematic and standard procedure
ii. RFP
iv. DECISION Oracle was selected as vendor
i. Strong and better manufacturing capability
ii. Promise Long term sustainable relationship
iii. Flexibility as office was very near by

2) Approval from Board

Two key decisions need to be taken before approaching board
i.
ii.

COST of the project

Timeline / END DATE of the project

By Systematic thinking and involvement of all partners, taking all factors into consideration they
approached board and convinced for project.
Cost: $15 million
Duration: 9 months

Gauarv Singh

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ERP 2

3) Implementation of Building team

Factors need to be considered

Size of the team

Role and responsibility of the team
Organization of team

DECISION

They picked best and brightest from the firm

FIVE Tracks
TRACK
o Cisco Information system leader
o Cisco business leader
o Business and IT consultant (Oracle / KPMG)
o Additional personnel from business as team member
o Project Manager

Gauarv Singh

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ERP 2

Implementation of Oracle
1.CRP0

Training on oracle to understand technical specification of project

Two week training
One small tiger team working on getting application up and running

Result at the end of phase

Some changes are required in product to fulfil the gap

Priority of changes

2.CRP1

Each track to make system work within specific area

Generate detailed documentation for each process/issue/workaround
Finding of gaps

Result at the end of phase

Identified what all modification were required

Standard document to understand the product
Feasibility of product to handle the modification

3.CRP2 and CRP3

Include major modification

Decide on after sales support package

Result at the end of phase

A centralize data warehouse to use all CISCO application

Changed company structure and process according to product
o Renumbered the product
o Changed Bill of material structure
o Changed most of the data according to new system
Green signal to System GO-LIVE

4.GO LIVE

Issue of hardware

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ERP 2

Inability of software to handle volume of transaction

Workaround and solution by Team

Responsibility of vendor to solve hardware issue (Didnt increase cost)

Stress testing was not done which resulted in data leak
All IT team worked together for next two months to solve all technical issues

Key Reason Behind success

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

No.1 agenda for the company, gave priority across all functional area
Company believe in standardization
Best people across the industry in the project
Team organization and culture
Systematic and structured approach in selection of vendor and software
Correct estimation and high class project management
Highly centralized and top to bottom approach by the company
Company adaptability changed its process where it was difficult to modify the

software
9. GAP Analysis, except volume testing they did a good gap analysis

Gauarv Singh

12120

ERP 2