Cisco Systems, Inc.: Implementing Erp Essay

Words: 2143
Pages: 9

1. Cisco suffered from inertia when an attempt was made to engage business management in selecting software for their individual areas, and/or agreeing to participate in the ERP implementation project. List and explain reasons why management would hesitate to become engaged in the IT process/project.
Below are reasons Cisco hesitated to take on an ERP project:
a) Fear of decentralization
b) Fear of “mega-projects” that ERP implementation often becomes
c) Disruption to the business
d) Need for strong internal team and strong partners
e) Balancing standardization versus proprietary functionality
f) Cost
Fear of decentralization
Cisco’s CEO believed that Silicon Valley firms had a tendency to decentralize too rapidly while not
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Cisco partnered with KPMG which turned to the software market with a multipronged approach for identifying the best software packages. KPMG’s strategy was to build as much knowledge as possible by leveraging the experiences of others. By orienting the selection process to what people were actually using and continuing to emphasize decision speed, Cisco narrowed the field to five packages within two days. After a week of evaluating the packages at a high-level, the team decided on two prime candidates, Oracle and another major player in the ERP market. Cisco team spent 10 days writing a Request For Proposals (RFP) to send to the vendors. While vendors prepared their responses, the Cisco team continued its “due diligence” by visiting a series of reference clients offered by each vendor. Following Cisco’s analysis of the RFP responses, each vendor was invited in for a three-day software demonstration and asked to show how their package could meet Cisco’s information processing requirements. Cisco provided sample data, while vendors illustrated how key requirements were met (or not met) by the software.
Selection of Oracle was based on a variety of factors. Three of the major decision points were:
• First, this project was being driven pretty strongly by manufacturing and Oracle had a better manufacturing capability than the other vendor.
• Second, they made a number of promises