Company Overview Cisco Systems, Inc. was founded in 1984 and is headquartered in San Jose, California. According to their 2014 Form 10-K Annual Report, Cisco “designs, manufactures, and sells Internet Protocol (IP) based networking products and services related to the communications and information technology industry.” Their main objective is help their customers improve growth and productivity while reducing costs and risks by connecting people, processes, data, and products through strategic business network platforms. Cisco Systems, Inc. has assembled their products into eight categories: Switching; Next-Generation Network (NGN) Routing; Service Provider Video; Collaboration; Data Center; Wireless; Security; and Other Products. They …show more content…
Suppliers depend on companies in the information technology industry, because IT companies are their primary customers. Due to the heavy competition among suppliers in the IT industriy, their bargaining power is low. Employees do not have any supplier power since their abilities are commonly available. Companies can easily lay-off and replace their work force. Sub-contractors also do not have much bargain power due to heavy competition among themselves. Buyer Power: Moderate. Buyers consist mainly of large entities such as mobile service providers, large companies, and governments. These entities purchase products and services in large volumes, and equipment costs form a significant part of their business expenses. Therefore, they can participate in negotiating a lower price, or move on to another competitor’s products and services. Although there are many products and services in the IT industry, there are high switching costs if a buyer decides to switch their IT networks. An entity would need to redesign their entire IT architecture, as these technologies are necessary to the success of businesses. Due to the many different product and service offerings, but high costs of switching, the buyer’s bargaining power is moderate. Threat of Substitutes: Low. There are not many substitutes for the products developed by companies in the information technology
Bargaining Power of Suppliers: The bargaining power of suppliers in the industry is low. There are numerous suppliers in this industry, and the large department stores have the ability to negotiate for the lowest prices. In addition, the switching costs are low, as the products are not highly differentiated. There are a large volume of purchases in the industry, allowing the department stores to exert even more power over the suppliers.
There are many network equipment suppliers, which are suffered from the down telecom market. Having mature technologies also commoditize the products. As such, the bargaining power of suppliers has been weak.
Bargaining Power of Suppliers: A producing industry requires raw materials - labour, components, and other supplies. This requirement leads to buyer-supplier relationships between the industry and the firms that provide it the raw materials used to create products. Suppliers, if powerful, can exert an influence on the producing industry, such as selling raw materials at a high price to capture some of the industry's profits. Tesco maintains direct professional business relationships with all their suppliers of organic food and non-food product worldwide. They also conduct supplier viewpoint surveys to find out what their suppliers think of Tesco.
Suppliers want steady orders and prompt payment, they also want to feel valued by the company that they supply.
Reportedly, analysts mentioned that Cisco’s supply chain structured like a pyramid. Based on Figure 2 below, there were quite a number of contract manufacturers on the second tier who were responsible for final assembly and they were dependent on large sub-tier companies for components such as processor chips and optical gear. And in turn, those companies were dependent on an even larger base of commodity
Blanchard (2009), “successful supplier relationships require two-way information, recommendations, metrics and incentives. Riordan Manufacturing must understand the cost and value of their entire supply chain. Without a detailed understanding of all costs, from raw materials through the end product or service, and the value provided by its supplier in the process, a supplier cannot be evaluated. Therefore, there are several things Riordan Manufacturing can do to improve their relationship with it suppliers. They can incorporate appropriate service levels and metrics into agreement, share critical information as early as possible, plan for major contingencies, expect and reward honesty and finally, make relationship meetings meaningful” (10 Strategies for Managing Suppliers).
The Bargaining Power of Suppliers (Moderate): Most of the industry’s products are sourced and manufactured by a network of third parties. The supplier group is diluted compared to the industry; KMD alone has over 45 suppliers. There is credible threat of suppliers adopting forward integration resulting in loss of major suppliers and emergence of new competitors for the industry. Highly effective and specialised products will pose high supplier switching costs for industry firms.
“Networks are all around us. They are in our walls, in the air. At schools, hotels, hospitals, even coffee shops. Always there, always on…This power exists today. In our routers. In our switches... . (Cisco, n.d.)
Cisco Systems, Inc. is an international American corporation; its head officer is in San Jose, California. It works in designing, making, and selling networking tools. The Systems of Cisco was established in 1984 by Leonard Bosack , Richard Troiano, and Sandy Lerner.
Bargaining power of suppliers. Suppliers have the ability to leverage, control, and negotiate the cost of their products (Hill et al., 2015, p. 56). In the case of the suppliers of the office supplies industry, more so for Staples, the bargaining power is weak and is considered to be low. The reason for its power being weak is a result of large companies having several suppliers that will easily compete against each other to provide the lowest cost of products.
More or less most of security technologies are available from different vendor, with some marginal difference in terms of features and process; buyers are in more bargaining power stage. The market transparency and the involvement of third party advisors (Nick Wilkinson accessed January/15 2013) provide more space for customer to bargain with suppliers. Leading service providers, who have IT security as a part of their
Cisco Systems is a multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells internet protocol (IP) based networking products and services related to the communication and information technology (IT) industry. The Company’s business is organized in three segments: the Americas; Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and Asia Pacific, Japan and China (Reuters). Cisco Systems, Inc. is the world’s leading manufacturers of computer networking products and systems.
The bargaining power of suppliers is low because of the presence of powerful buyers who are able to direct terms to the suppliers who are generally small firms. Besides these suppliers of tires, parts, electronic, mechanical equipment are small players and may have only one or two clients (ancillaries).
Cisco IOS or Inter-work Operating System is an operating system for the company Cisco’s system routers and network switches. Cisco systems is a multinational corporation based in San Jose of California that designs, manufactures, and sells networking equipment. The company was founded in 1984 by two people working at Stanford University on the computer support staff. The two Stanford University members were Leonard Bosack, who was in charge of the computer science department’s computers and his then girl friend Sandy Lerner who was in charge of the graduate school of business’s computers and they named it after San Francisco which is why in the company’s early years they insisted on the first “c” in
The suppliers to this business are the companies, which help to build the IT infrastructure. There are many companies in the market which provide mobile application development and other IT infrastructure. So the bargaining power of suppliers are low.