Cisco Systems: Building Leading Internet Capabilities

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Despite Cisco in the late 90s was the leader in both IT assessment and its market, much of technology roll-out would have happened even without Cisco’s participation at some point. A technology is not inert. If Cisco did not support the overall IT movement in the right moment, it would not probably become a leader on the market if not even went extinct. Thus, the early adoption of the emerging technology was crucial for company’s success. Moreover, as Cisco became a leader of the routing and switching market, many innovations in this area have been brought by this company and who knows, which of them could have been discovered by other telecommunication vendors, and which discoveries would have never been made if the company did not adopt the use of IT in the company.

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- Cisco undertook two unique approaches for introducing a paradigm shift toward becoming the leader in Internet capabilities: 1) each senior executive had to identify how the Internet could enhance their business and 2) other companies were identified as Internet capability leaders that Cisco wanted to benchmark themselves against. If you were a senior executive at Cisco, would you like or dislike these two approaches? Why or why not?

At my opinion, Cisco took the right approach on technology assessment. Anyway, there is the evidence that the right approaches have been chosen, since it brought about the growth in the following years. As of today, the company is still leading the market, however assessing newer technologies.

The step toward delegation of the responsibility for the identification of Internet opportunities to company’s SVPs seems logical. Every certain senior executive is responsible for one’s own tiny functional department, thus they are more aware of the needs of the department and the opportunities than CIO or CEO. No doubts, not every SVP was technically enlightened; hence, not all of them could see, where IT could take them clearly. In this matter, company’s internal IT specialists, along with some external consultants, were directed to them, to help determine and correct the ideas, formed by the functional crews.

Right determination of competitors was crucial in IT assessment, as Cisco competed not with its market competitors, but with technology assessing competitors. To the time, Cisco was already a leader in IT innovations among its peers, however companies from other markets mastered certain technologies better, thus they were the ones, whom with Cisco had to be competitors in the IT mastering area. If Cisco chase its direct competitors from the market of switchers and routers, probably none of their departments would have mastered any new technologies.

If I were a senior executive in Cisco at that time, such approach on the issue would make me feeling more contributive to company’s success. Giving more responsibility to senior executives may seem as overwhelming thing for them, but the thing is that good executives, who are compassionate to company’s success, seek for that responsibility and chance to change the world. However, not every manager is the same. Thus, many of senior executives in the company perceived it as the extra work, a routine, which they had to do instead of being involved in their direct responsibilities. However, if the managers were on the positions of SVP in such a gigantic company, probably they already proved their compassion and willingness to contribute to company’s success. Therefore, I think, the decision to whelm SVPs with the additional work in this case was positively perceived by all of them. For many, though, it became a routine when Chambers insisted that such researches had to be conducted every six months.

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- Do some external research on Cisco’s current Internet capabilities from the initial implementations described in the case. Refer to the improvement opportunities listed in Exhibits 4-6 that includes customer satisfaction, collaboration, influence and learning development. Remember to include your external references and citations.

The case study was written back in early 2001. For now, most of Cisco’s Web-enablement initiatives, which came out of the benchmarks, have already been implemented. However, let’s look at which objectives project’s team determined for their development and which of them are currently implemented.

Starting from customer satisfaction, as the internet capabilities, company determined automated contract and document assembly, and a self-service model. As of today, the company has standardized partnership programs, which enable partners and the company to streamline the process, reducing the number of legal procedures required. Moreover, today any Cisco’s client can get the access to any product or service the company provides, just through one click (Cisco, 2015).

Cisco also determined some goals to its synergy, community involvement and collaboration, comparing itself with the leading IBM, Dell and Safeway. Throughout the years, Cisco literally integrated its partners to their own ecosystem, providing them a partner training, where they can exchange knowledge through company’s Partner Education Connection. Cisco also created the partnership network, where the partners can connect, find each other and work in Cisco’s partnership programs, which give both Cisco and its partners certain benefits (Cisco, 2015).

As we may remember from the case, one of Cisco’s objectives was to gain the influence on government and society. The leaders in the area of influence, which they determined, were AARP and Sierra Club. Today, Cisco conducts numerous annual global and local events worldwide, where its partners, clients and prospective workers can exchange ideas, collaborate and share the knowledge (Cisco, 2015).

Just like Dell, Siemens and American Express, the company wanted to develop their own eLearning portal and educational programs to increase awareness on their external customers and partners. Today, Cisco provides eLearning through “Cisco Live!” portal not only to their employees, but basically to any registered user. Cisco raises prospective employees through numerous educational programs, including famous “Networking Academy” program provided through more than 9000 institutions in 170+ countries around the world (Cisco, 2015).

It is hard to find a company today, which would have mastered IT capabilities better than Cisco did. The Web-enablement in Cisco