Individual Case Write Up - Cisco 1. What is an ERP system? What does it do?
Enterprise Resource Planning systems are integrated software applications that assimilate internal and external information that is required to manage an organization efficiently and effectively. The system encompasses finance, accounting, manufacturing, sales, service, and customer relationship management and automates these activities with a unified software system. The main purpose of an ERP system is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions within an organization. ERP systems also aim to simplify the sales process by automating the entry requirements and making it easier for different business functions to access the …show more content…

4. Cisco was highly successful with its ERP effort. What accounts for this success? What were the most important things that Cisco did correctly? What could they have done better?
Cisco began the successful implementation of the ERP system right off the bat by establishing a strong partnership with KPMG and choosing the right people for the Cisco team. It is crucial with projects of this magnitude to get the right people in place before you decide what direction you are going and Cisco made it a point to build the strongest team possible. Furthermore, the team reached out to industry professionals to gain as much knowledge as possible by leveraging the experience of others, which assisted them in picking the right vendor. After choosing the vendor, contracting based on capability instead of configuration proved to be extremely helpful after cutting over. This alleviated a lot of additional costs that could have come from modifications that were made once they realized the systems flaws and constraints. Internally, the support from top management in making the project a top priority company wide, reiterated the importance of the transition, which in turn fostered support from everyone in the organization.
In terms of the development and implementation, the use of cross-functional teams proved to be very effective in giving the project team an all-encompassing view of each business functions requirements for the new