Cisco Systems, Inc.

:
Implementing ERP
Section E
Group 5
Aswathi Menon - 2014PGP071
Chimata Krishna Sunny
IPM2011015
Debashis Behera
2014PGP098
Kartikeya Sudhir Vyas
2014PGP159
Nanneti Suraj 2014PGP216
Pallav Prakash 2014PGP243

Q1. Ciscos IT Model Prior to 1994 and its Weaknesses

Prior to January 1994, Cisco was a $500 million company running a UNIX-based software package
to support its core transaction processing.
The functional areas supported by the package included:
Financial
Manufacturing
Order Entry
Weaknesses of the Model include:
The application didnt provide the degree of redundancy, reliability and maintainability required
by Cisco Systems.
Cisco could not make the required changes to the application to meet their business needs.
It was too complex and too customised
The systems replacement difficulties of individual functional areas perpetuated the
deterioration of Ciscos legacy environment.
Systems outages became routine. Product shortcomings exacerbated the difficulties of
recovering from outages
An unauthorised method for accessing the core application database malfunctioned, corrupting
Ciscos central database

Q2. Initial Inhibitions towards ERP and how

they
were
addressed
Solvik wanted to avoid the ERP system because ERP implementation was a mega project in itself as a lot of
training and monitoring ,analysis and modification of gaps found in the system was required which could pose
several challenges.
Implementation Strategy:
Building the Implementation team
A 100 member team with each member placed onto one of the 5 tracks- Order Entry, Manufacturing, Finance,
Sales/Reporting, Technology
Each track had a Cisco information systems leader & a business leader
& additional business personnels and business & IT consultants from KPMG or Oracle
An Executive Steering Committee of high level executives from KPMG, Oracle & Cisco was formed to provide
high level sponsorship, to ensure visibility and to motivate the team.
Implementing Oracle
Development Technique employed- rapid iterative prototyping
Implementation was broken into series of phases called Conference Room Pilots (CRP)
CRP0- To accommodate Cisco processes without modification. The team was trained, the system set up and
the Oracle package configured.
CRP1- To make the system work within their specific area for each track. Modifications identified, categorised,
evaluated and modified.
CRP2 - New approach of data warehouse was employed allowing all of Ciscos applications to access a single
source for their information needs
CRP3- To test the full system and access companys readiness to go live.

Q3.Why managers were resisting and not

volunteering for leading ERP
Managers resist Information systems such as ERP for the following reasons:
ERP implementations often become Mega Projects.
It would run over the legacy systems which were already in place.
The cost of implementing ERP might at times be too high to convince the board.
Time taken to implement ERP might also be too high.
Tendency for people to want the system to mirror their method of operation instead of
re-training people to do things the way the system intended them. So this takes longer.
To meet business needs, it would require heavy involvement from the business
community and wouldnt be an IT-only initiative.
A project of such high scale might spin out of control and deliver sub-standard results.
Risk of failure is extremely high and would come at a heavy cost.
IT department would probably have to devote all their time , effort and resources to
the project and wont be able to involve in anything else.
People were not willing to lead the ERP project because they believed that the failure
of the project would cause them to lose their jobs.

Q4. Advantages and Disadvantages of ERP

Implementation Approach
Advantages of the ERP Implementation approach:
The implementation was rolled out through a rapid iterative prototyping technique, in
phases called as Conference Room Pilots. The CRPs allowed Cisco to handle the entire
process step wise i.e. training, set up and configuration in CRP0, business process alignment
in CRP1, modifications, data warehousing and capability testing in CRP2 and CRP3.
The approach allowed the implementation team to identify and resolve issues with the
system phase by phase. The gaps in the system because of which a no. of business
processes were not supported, were identified and escalated in CRP1. In CRP2 the need to
integrate reporting of historical and future data for consistency, was met.
Disadvantages of the ERP implementation approach:

Each phase was independent of the other. The business process considerations were not
taken into account while configuring the systems. Therefore gaps in the system were
discovered later. Also the inability of the Oracle package to support after sales service
requirements were discovered after configuration which brought changes in the budget and
plan of the project.

The entire IT department had to prioritize this project over all other projects because of the
big changes in scope of data communication which would now take place through a data
warehouse.

The approach for testing the system involved running the processes sequentially instead of

Q5. Initial performance dip during adoption

Cisco were quite lucky in the eventual success of the projectThough the ERP implementation team planned its implementation strategy
through CRPs, it left out a no. of considerations which led to the initial failure of
the system during the adoption phase. Also the lack of synchronization of the
different CRPs led to constant revision of the project scope, modifications in the
software to support business processes and changing project plans and budget.
Therefore the implementation and eventual successful adoption of the system by
Cisco had to do with more of luck than smart planning.
Reasons for initial failure of the system
The system was unstable and frequently went down because of problems with the
size and architecture of the hardware. Also the hardware purchase was made on
capability rather than configuration, as a result of which this problem could not be
immediately rectified by additional hardware purchase.
While testing the system in CRP3, the team had conducted the tests by running
the processes sequentially instead of simultaneously. Therefore during the testing
phase the system was successful in taking the load. However during adoption the
system could not handle large transaction volumes in the Cisco environment.