Cisco Systems, Inc.

: Implementing ERP
Section A
Group No. 03
Abishek Shenoy
Jitendra Kumar
Kritika Verma
Meenakshi Sundareswaran R
Rikki Das
Shalu Yadav
Shashank Shekhar

Challenges faced by CISCO

High growth resulted into scalability issues
Lack of flexibility in existing system
Application did not provide required degree of reliability, redundancy and
maintainability
Incremental modification of application didnt complement companys high growth
Existing application could not handle high volumes- malfunctioning, corrupting and
crashing of system
Autonomous approach of system replacement proved insufficient
New initiative required great mix of technical and business knowledge- IT only
initiative was ineffective for such a mega-project
Budget and time constraints
Problems faced by CRP1
Many processes were not supported,
Operational issues and huge workforce needed
Cutting over to Oracle reduced on-time shipping to 75% from existing 95%

How did Pete Solvik resolve these for Cisco?

A structured approach to implementing the ERP Package
KPMG was chosen as the integration partner, which helped speed up the research and
knowledge-building process for selecting the right ERP vendor.
Ultimately, Oracle was chosen as the vendor because it had a better manufacturing
capability, offered long term development of functionality of the package and was
flexible.
To convince the board, Solvik and his team set a timeline of 9 months for the complete
implementation. The failure of the legacy system at the time of the board pitch
strengthened their claim for a new ERP package.

A definite Implementation team structure was set in place. Members were spread over
Order Entry, Manufacturing, Finance, Sales/Reporting & Technology tracks. Each track
consisted of Cisco leaders and personnel and consultants from KPMG and Oracle.

Implementing ERP
Team employed rapid iterative prototyping, where implementation was broken down into
a series Conference Room Pilots(CRPs)
CRP0 Objective was to train the implementation team on the application and also
configure the Oracle package. It was also understood that modifications to the package
were necessary.
CRP1 Teams documented all procedures for every process as well as issues during the
modeling. Modification requests were tagged as Red, Yellow and Green.
CRP2 Scope expanded to include large modifications and a new after sales package. A
new approach with a centralized data warehouse was chosen. IT department employees
started to decommit from other projects to focus on the ERP project.
CRP3 Focus was on testing the full system and if it was ready to be launched. A days
worth of business data was collected and was used in a simulation by the system. The
result was to the satisfaction of the entire implementation team.

Key Learning Points

Cross Functional Implementation Team : Different members from KPMG, Oracle
and best employees from Cisco came together and incorporated several points of
view which led to efficient brainstorming sessions
Cisco leveraged KPMGs experience in conducting a detailed vendor package
evaluation
Vendor selection was based on manufacturing capabilities, long term development of
functionality and flexibility offered
Choosing a vendor such as Oracle proved to be beneficial as the success of the project
was very closely tied to Oracles future business which encouraged Oracle to provide
end to end services to successfully implement the whole development
Strong vendor commitment from Oracle, the hardware vendor and KPMG lead to an
eventual stabilization of the software and improved performance

 Project was top priority of the year for CISCO and had a Cisco made a smart
move to purchase h/w equipment based on promised capability rather than
specific Configuration
Flexibility is indispensable in dynamic environment. Cisco who earlier
propagated no customization incorporated some of it in order to cope up with
the change
Dedicated in-house IT support for a project of this significance and magnitude
Business performance was unstable in the initial stages due to difficulty in
adopting the new system
Timeline for project implementation was chosen from an accounting point of
view i.e. beginning of Q3 so that accountants dont have ambiguity in
recording standards