Cisco’s Strategy in Recessionary Times

“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’s current strategy attempts to do too much and appeal to a much too broad target market, and thus needs to consider different strategies.

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) typically refers to a corporate fiscal and strategic set of strategies that deal with the purchasing, selling, and/or combining of different companies or pieces of companies that are able to help grow a company or experience rapid innovation with either creating another business entity or investing research and development from the ground up (Hennepopf, 2009). Modern organizations are so highly complex and competitive that the old paradigm improving efficiency and the bottom line improves, is no longer all it takes to be successful. Companies must continue to reinvent themselves, put Board egos aside and look at the marketplace, their expertise, and what they can do to retain market share. With technology changing so

Even though Cisco created the Customer Focus Initiative to try to serve leader customers better, as the SVP of Customer Advocacy, Allred still felt anxious that this reorganization would reduce the customers’ loyalty. He was also afraid that since the products were high priced, customers would ignore the longtime relationship and turn to Cisco’s competitors. Therefore, adjusting the existing culture to adapt to the new structure became the fundamental issue of Allred.

Cisco’s mission is to solve their customer’s most important business challenges by delivering intelligent networks and technology architectures built on integrated products, services, and software platforms. They accomplish this by making everything thing do about the customer.

Yemen G.; Chatterjee S.; &Bougeois III L. (2003). Cisco: Early if not Elegant (A). University of Virginia. Darden Business Publishing.

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.

2. Given the industries in which the Cisco competes, what are the implications for the major types of buying situations?

Cisco not only failed to forecast a market downturn and also reportedly its problems were largely caused by inherent defects in the company systems. Below are some of the reasons why Cisco landed in financial trouble in early 2001. There were several factors that play a part for Cisco’s crisis in early 2001. But the main culprit was the misalignment of Cisco’s interest with this of its contract manufacturers which leaded to communication breakdown in the overall supply chain process. Stanley et al., (p.10, 2007) mentioned that “a supply chain is made up of a series of linked company-level value chains where communication up and down the supply chain can help build processes that enable the entire chain to make and deliver winning products and services”.

I would say an excellent strategy to capture market opportunities, Cisco and its partners must continue to evolve, invest, lead and grow together.

* Be committed to our business and improve benefits to our customers as wireless product technology changes.

Cisco System becomes a $12 billion high-technology company with over 47,000 employees in not less than 54 countries of the world due to its strategic management policies and practices among which is diverse

TI is aware that its customers depend on the company to assist them innovate and get to market first. The company, therefore, drive toward

MICROSOFT (windows server) 2. INTEL ( cutting-edge technology) 3. SAP ( IT infrastructure) 4. VMWaRE ( virtual infrastructure solutions) 5. ORACLE ( database solutions) 6. BMC (data centre automation.) 7. BROCADE ( networking solutions) Cost structure36 1. Cost of Revenue $48260m 2. Sales & Admin expense $7664m 3. R&D Expense $856m 4. Capital Expenditure $675m 5. Total Acquisition $2562m 6. Total Operating expense $57640m 7. Software&network 33 %&39% increase Revenue streams21 Key resources35 1. Acquisition 2. Brand equity 3. Long ability (as high per company) 4. Intellectual property 5. R&D and revenue stream 6. Human resource 7. Core competence Key activity37 1. Support & deployment Services 2. Cloud & security services 3. Software & peripherals ( Printer, TV, networking, wear less product, anti-virus) 4. Client product (PC, Monitor, note book, work station, tablet, Smart phone) 5. Developing technologies ( in 2011 its open the dell silicon valley research and development centre ) Value proposition 1. Dell customization 2. Direct sell approach 3. Product configuration 4. Pre & post sell customer

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.