Discussion Questions
Cisco Case Questions 1. At the start of the case, Cisco’s information systems are failing, yet no one steps forward to lead the effort to replace them. Why is this? Why were no managers eager to take on this project?
At the beginning of the case, Cisco’s information systems were failing because they were experiencing exponential growth and the IT systems that were in place could not provide the reliability and maintenance for this magnitude of growth. Companies that experience this kind of growth usually make decisions based off the status quo and assume that what has worked in the past will continue to work going forward. In addition, with such sizable growth, implementing changes to the company’s information…show more content… f. Executive Steering Committee: which comprised of the VP of Manufacturing, the VP of Customer Advocacy, the Corporate Controller, Solvik, Oracle’s senior VP of Applications, and
3. What were the most important things that Cisco did correctly? 4. Did Cisco do anything wrong on the project? If so what? 5. Compare and contrast the approach at Cisco with the approach at Harley-Davidson. 6. Compare and contrast the outcomes of the project at Cisco with the outcomes at Harley-Davidson 7. We often heat that senor management commitment is important for projects like Cisco’s ERP implementation, but senior management commitment to do what? What can top managers do to maximize chances for success here? 8. Cisco went live with ERP in a big bang fashion, which is inherently risky. How did Cisco mitigate this risk? 9. Conduct a search of articles on Hershey’s SAP ERP implementation in 1999 – there are several Wall Street Journal articles available (Proquest database in UT library esearch collection). Compare and contrast what was reported regarding the initial SAP implementation at Hershey with the Cisco case. 10. Compare and contrast the approach at Cisco with the approach at Tektronix 11. Compare and contrast the outcomes of the project at Cisco with the outcomes at Tektronix 12.
