CASE QUESTIONS CISCO 1a. How did Cisco find itself in trouble with regard to its intended IT prior to Brad Boston's arrival? Prior to his arrival, CISCO had a decentralized approach to IT spending. Independent business groups were making decisions in fuctional silos. Each group their own funds for IT, therefore, redundant applications such as CRM systems were created. This was a global issue as well as a localized issue. The Cisco philosophy regarding IT was simple: As long as someone was willing to pay for it, the IT department would work on whatever process/project specified. This is not only a waste of money, but it also creates problems when trying to work across teams. If two teams use two different processes to come …show more content…
In 1993, when Peter Solvik took over as CIO of Cisco, he reallocated the IT budget to each individual department. He also took the power away from an IT steering committee and gave it to departments. This gave each department the ability to function independent of each other. There was no need for them to communicate with other departments in order to achieve similar objectives and goals. 2a. What is BPOC's role? The BPOC's role is to get together biweekly to review and prioritize key initiatives that impact the company as a whole. BPOC would categorize each initiative and then make recommendations for the different projects. b. How much formal authority does it have? While they demonstrated no "formal" authority; the recommendations carried a great deal of weight. These are senior executives and they do have a vast knowledge of what is needed for the company to continue to be successful. c. How much IT funding does it control? It does not control funding for any initiatives, it merely has strong influence and promotes its recommendations. 3a. Would you approve the call center project, including the rationale for your recommendation? We would approve the call center project. The call center pilot was already successful in the European market and is ready to be deployed throughout the entire company. It would create a more efficient process for both internal and external Cisco customers. It would impact multiple
4) Due to the rebounding industry growth rate of 15% in 2011 comparable to the explosive CAGR of 16.1% from 2003-2008 combined with the partial opening of the new plant in Slovenia, OH Rates are most likely to increase with higher volume orders and larger scale operations. This in turn will decrease our bids and make it more attractive for prospective clients.
In this report, we analysed and evaluate the project management of the case: The case, The PCNet Project (A): Project Risk Management in an IT integration Project. We had look into the project definition phase of the PCNet project and discuss some of the problems that emerged during the project in relation to project definition phase. We also evaluated the role of the PCNet project manager and discussed some of the core skillsets demanded by the job role. The risk management aspect of the PCNet project was also studied in our report. Lastly we made recommendations to address the dilemma faced by Jack Muller, the project manager for the PCNet project.
Peter Solvik joined the Cisco team in January 1993 as their new CIO. He saw that there were two challenges that needed to be addressed in the company. First, Cisco’s Information Technology department was too traditional in the sense that it was viewed as a cost center that reported through the Finance department, and it was too internally oriented. There were three ways that he approached this: The IT-reporting relationship was changed from Accounting to Customer Advocacy, the IT budget pertaining to the functions were returned to the functions leaving just a small portion left in General and Administrative expense, and the central IT steering committee was disbanded and replaced with a structure where IT investment decisions on application projects were pushed out to the
The reason 2013 intangible assets make up more of the total assets compared to 2013 intangible assets is due to the NDS acquisition that occurred in 2013
Cisco is clearly the one of Information Age companies. Cisco gives the priority on the Information Technology. In the case study, Cisco adopted strategy of systematic acquisitions and strategic partners, which proof that Cisco focuses on cooperated information. Cisco also concerned about standardization, flexibility, extensibility, and scalability. The decisions that Solvik and his team made during this case trends to emphasize how more Cisco becomes closer to the definition of Information Age company. They applied internet and intranet which is not so popular at that year for employee self-service, communication and distance learning, customer
The pros and cons of the current Alcan technology infrastructure seemed to be heavier on the con side than the pro side. While the intent was to better the organization with the functions that were required on the IT side, however the result was something much different than what they anticipated. “Should you spend most of your technology budget on infrastructure, hosted applications, custom line-of-business applications, or what? It depends on the industry that the business is in. Generally, most businesses spend around half of their technology budget on infrastructure—computers, networking equipment, and Internet Service Providers” (I.T. in Business, n.d.). Mistakes were made in decisions concerning the technology infrastructure of
Yemen G.; Chatterjee S.; &Bougeois III L. (2003). Cisco: Early if not Elegant (A). University of Virginia. Darden Business Publishing.
1. Study the networked supply chain concept as implemented by Cisco. What are its strengths and weaknesses?
Also, they think that they can send the IT folks onto the field once they are done with the planning and budget cycle. But, little do they understand here that it would be of no use sending the IT people after the planning as things to be changed as early as possible in a project life cycle. The more delay in the changes, the more complex and expensive the project would be.
* Employing third party for rolling out the new technologies (once they are successfully implemented at a particular location) would reduce the pressure on the IT structure and the central IT team. This would allow them to focus more on the projects which may provide breakthrough for the
The new process that was instituted to prioritize IT projects at Volkswagen of America is very well organized. It takes an IT project and looks at it from multiple aspects, from business to IT. It also allows for several departmental entities to play a more active role in tying in business objectives with stated benefits of the IT project. As stated in Applegate, “IT governance is the effort to devise an overarching and integrated approach, addressing broad themes such as operating performance, strategic control, risk management, and values alignment.” (Applegate, 403) In
Cisco 's efforts to restructure have created many challenges for this team. Upon analysis, we have concluded that the decision to reorganize in order to keep Cisco relevant in the evolving technology market is the correct one. The company needed to adapt in order to maintain their strong reputation in the industry. They have gone
MediaTek Company is a large global chipset supplier in wireless handset market. More than half of the chipsets are selling to shanzhai market like China or South Asia. Shanzhai means illegal counterfeits or “knock-offs”. Over the last 30 years, the company had great success through this target market. However, the CEO of the company Ming-Kai Tsai was in a dilemma. He wants to get more opportunities for the company’s further growth. The primary problem is whether they should serve tire-one companies like Nokia, Motorola or Samsung instead of focus on shanzhai market. The secondary problem they faced is the company’s image and the ethical concern. The
Since it was critical to Cisco’s strategic commitment of advancing, the company had to pick the best option to implement quickly. The two alternatives were know as: create knowledge and expand the community. With key decision criteria , this report carefully examines both of the options that can quickly be implemented and yet help Cisco integrate into IoE era.
Cisco 's collaboration selection incorporates video, voice, data and mobile applications on fixed and portable networks throughout a variety of devices including tablets, mobile phones, and all types of computer systems. Cisco possesses a Unified Computing System (UCS), which is one the key products because this platform bonds network, storage access into a centrally programmed system.