E Business at Cisco Essay

Introduction Cisco Systems, Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells networking equipments around the globe which is considered as the giant in networking. Cisco headquarters locate in San Jose, California, United States. Cisco hardware, software, and service offerings are used to create the Internet solutions that make these networks possible, giving individuals, companies, and countries easy access to information anywhere, at any time. Cisco has pioneered the use of the Internet in its own business practice and offers consulting services based on its experience to help other organizations around the world. Cisco was founded in 1984 by Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple who worked as computer operations staff members at Stanford University. Richard Troiano joined later with them. The stock was added to the Dow Jones Industrial Average on June 8, 2009, and is also included in the S&P 500 Index, the Russell 1000 Index, NASDAQ 100 Index and the Russell 1000 Growth Stock Index. John Chambers is the current Chairman and CEO of the Cisco. Company revenue was US$ 46.061 billion in 2012, while its operating income was US$ 10.065 billion. Net income US$ 8.041 billion 2012 while it has US$ 91.759 billion 2012 of total assetsand total equity of US$ 51.301 billion in 2012. E – Business Innovation at Cisco Cisco’s e-business innovation has begun in early 1990s. Cisco’s annual revenues increased from $1.5 million to $340 million in 1992. Their market share rose from 50% to 85%. It was a big challenge to meet the high demands generated by rapid growth of their sales. In order to serve their customers they had to †¢Hired engineers as quickly as possible, growing the engineering staff at over 160% per year. †¢Extended telephone support hours. †¢Invested in a system to prioritize calls. †¢Built the technology to remotely diagnose problems customers had with their products. †¢Offered training courses and consultations services to customers. During early 1990s companies invest a fixed portion of their annual budget on IT. It was 0.75% in Cisco 1993. In 1994 board of directors approved to invest on implementing $15 million Oracle ERP system. It was 2.5 % of 1993 revenues and more than 3 times the previous year’s IT budget. Company also approved total budget exceed $100 million to upgrade IT in the company. That upgrade integrated all of Cisco’s systems, and provided the company with a centralized information source. Cisco tried to use information technology to overcome the issues involve with high demand. It launched an official Internet site Cisco.com, primarily dedicated to company and product information as a result of that in 1991. It also launched the Cisco Connection Online for Cisco’s customers, which include a Technical Assistance Center where customers could easily solve their technical problems, and a list of product faults and remedies for faults. It also set up electronic bulletin boards. These initiatives forced online technical assistance which simplifies the burden on Cisco’s engineers and customer service representatives. Customers could download software updates, check manuals and email Cisco employees with questions by the 1993. Cisco E-Business Models Cisco involve in Business-to-Business (B2B) e-commerce as well as the Business-to-Consumer (C2C) e-commerce. B2B Businesses can gain significant financial returns, can attract and retain customers, reduce their expenses and uplift their reputation, brand name and corporate identity with favorable return on investment with the use of the Internet and e-business strategies. It helps to increase employee productivity, support for decision-making etc†¦ B2B facilitate electronic transactions to happen between businesses. The Internet and business’s dependency on other businesses for their supplies, utilities, and services has enhanced the popularity of B2B e-commerce. Extranets are the most commonly used for B2B operations in recent time. Extranet can be consist of at least 2 intranet or more than that. B2B e-commerce allows dynamic interaction between business partners. Cisco uses extranet with their Web based EDI to coordinate among their suppliers and manufactures via the Cisco Supplier Connection (CSC) which was formally known as manufacturing Connection Online. CSC was launched in June 1998. Registered users can access this through the Cisco website. CSC has integrated Cisco’s first-tier suppliers such as Ariba, Great Plains, J.D. Edwards, Lawson, NetObjects, NetSales, OneCore, PeopleSoft, QuickMarketing, and Works.com to Cisco’s ERP order fulfillment systems and inventory databases. This provides Cisco the opportunity to respond to their customer requests in real time. Orders are check with Cisco’s current production schedule, and at the same time their first-tier suppliers get inform of any deviations from production forecasts by automatic postings on the extranet as soon as a customer place an order. Suppliers can respond immediately to requests for supplies since they get informed real time with actual orders. Since Cisco is keeps inventories CSC also keep track on inventories and transfer inventory between different manufacturers to respond to component shortages. Other than that all the purchase orders and invoices are processed electronically with the help of CSC. Cisco uses their CSC at new product introduction processes as well. It helps to share information between engineering, procurement, manufacturing, and marketing sections in each sub processes such as design, prototyping, ramp-up, quality assurance and product specification. Overall cycle time to market new products gets reduce due to this collaboration. Cisco also developed a system for automatically testing products to ensure they were up to Cisco’s specifications and ready ship. If there are failures in an assembly line or auto test, Cisco get alert immediately by the manufacture. This prevent whole batch of products get affected by a common fault. FedEx, Cisco’s shipping partner get automatically alert as soon as order ready for shipment. Then the order assign a shipping number, pick up at the manufacturer, and deliver by FedEx to the customer. Direct fulfillment is also a part of Cisco’s B2B e-commerce. It automates all the required information in-order to support direct shipping of products which are configured by suppliers, directly to customers without going through Cisco. Cisco’s B2B processes also uses Dynamic replenishment, which allows market demand information to flow directly to manufactures without any delays. B2C Cisco is not a company which implemented B2B e-commerce, they are also practicing B2C e commerce as well. They have implemented Cisco Connection Online (CCO) in-order to handle the B2B and B2C e-commerce activities. In early ages customers had to talk with a sales rep if they wanted to buy something. Due to the mistakes by sales reps and complexity of product line only about 75% of orders were entered correctly. Other 25% had to be re-entered. Cisco has introduced their e-commerce site as a solution for this. Cisco was able sold $75 million worth of products on the Internet within first 4 months. Cisco was able to overcome the issue of 25% error rate in customer orders with the introduction of their website. 27% of all orders were placed using the Internet in 1997. It was said that there were 70,000 registered users in that time and they were accessing website 700,000 times per month. This not only minimizes the error s in customer orders but also it helped Cisco to save $150 million per year by delivering technical support through the website. It increases Cisco’s customer satisfaction ratings and Cisco’s productivity was improving rapidly. Cisco upgrades their CCO regularly with the help of consulted groups known as Internet Commerce Advisory Boards (ICABs), it consist both Cisco employees as well as their customers. This is also use to do global market researches. Cisco provided localization to their first few page levels of their website since August 2000. All prices were quoted in the appropriate currency, based on an accurate exchange rate with the localization. Cisco Connection Online – CCO CCO is a portal. It consist information in Cisco’s ERP systems, databases, legacy systems, and client-server systems. CCO connects with Cisco’s extranets which they are using for their suppliers and partners. This consist of 5 modules 1.Market Place 2.Technical assistance and software library 3.Customer service 4.Internetworking Product Center 5.Cisco supplier connection (CSC) Market Place is the front-end virtual shopping center describe in above, where customers can purchase items online. It also includes equipment configuration details, prices of products and purchase requisition tools. Customers can use purchase requisition tools if they want to take print out for submission of company purchase orders. Resellers and distributors are also using this module to place their orders online. Technical assistance and software library consist of an open forum which enables customers and business partners to get online answers to their technical questions. Users also can download driver updates and utility software through this. It also includes tools provide technical assistance to identify issues in Cisco equipments and take needed preventative or repair measures. Cisco was able to save millions of dollars spending on CD burning and shipments with the introduction of software library. Technical assistance forum led users to post their questions and search for answers, interact with networking experts who are willing to offer their help. This simply creates a virtual community of technical experts and it led Cisco’s experts only to focus on critical and urgent issues. Customer service provides non-technical assistance to consumers who are looking for details like product status, price catalog, latest releases, and their service order status. Internetworking Product Center is an application use for handle order processing. This can advise users if there is any missing information in product configuration when users are placing their orders online. Therefore reworking is minimized. Since this application connects with Cisco’s order management system to its scheduling system, customers and partners can access information about the current status of their orders. E-Business Types at Cisco Cisco has implemented more than one business types in their online presence. Cisco successfully running store-front model as well as the portal model through their web presence. Other than the above 2 models they also implemented B2B e commerce and EDI as a part of their E-Business initiative since early 1990s. Store-Front Model This is the most popular e-business model in the current context. It allows users or consumers to do their shopping online without going to a physical shop. According to the statistics about 60% of the internet users involve in online shopping activities. This model allows merchants to sell their products on the Web. Online transaction processing, security, online payment, information storage should be mainly considerable factors in this model. Cisco’s storefront model include †¢Online catalog of their products †¢Order processing system †¢Secure payment system †¢Timely order fulfillment system This allows Cisco to conduct their business 24 by 7 in 365 days of the year. A shopping cart allows Cisco to display photos and descriptions their products by category (routers, switches, servers, etc†¦). Consumers are allow to browse through those categories and its’ items then selects items that they want to buy and puts them in their cart. Consumers can the check out what they have selected and those orders are sent to Cisco. (90% of these orders are directly sends to Cisco’s suppliers. Orders are process in just in time based.) According to the Cisco CEO nearly 90 % of orders placed on Cisco’s website, the Cisco Connection Online (CCO), and nearly 80% of all products were built and shipped from a supply partner, without Cisco ever physically taking possession. This shows how Cisco has utilized their e-business strategies in-order to give a better customer satisfaction. Portal Model Cisco portal model provide their consumers the chance to find almost everything relate to internetworking. Cisco provides a vertical portal. It consist information from simple switches to Data Center Management and Automation, from Routing Services to Data Center and Virtualization Services, from home consumers to ISPs. It also consists of all the information relates to examinations conduct by Cisco such as CCNA, CCNP etc†¦ EDI – Electronic data Interchange Cisco handles B2B e-commerce via the applications which are implemented for its consumers. These solutions allow Cisco to sell its’ products and services and manage their customer and supplier/partner relationships over the Internet. Cisco use their e-business strategies as a model of how to use the Internet as co-operation tool to increase the productivity and efficiency of a company by utilizing and transforming their manual process with the help of information technology. As mentioned early customers can browse product specifications and make orders via Cisco.com. That information then directed Cisco’s suppliers without any intervention of Cisco. Products are produce only after they are ordered (just in time). Therefore the amount to spend on warehouses to store products is very much little. Cisco doesn’t like to obtain many B2B relationships with the technology and the infrastructure that they work, because they consider suppliers as a time and labor intensive expense to them. Cisco has created the demand for products that can ease and speed up B2B transactions with the implementation of their Global Network Business model. Cisco tried to cut down almost all the intermediaries in-order to increase their profit margins as well as to get competitive advantages with introduce of Electronic Data Interchange in 1997. EDI helped Cisco to †¢Gained real-time access to its supplier information. †¢Experienced lower business costs in processing orders (an estimated $46 per order). †¢Improved the productivity of its employees involved in purchasing (78% increase). †¢Reduced overall order cycle time. Cisco saved $250 million per year in business expenses through their new e-business initiatives in 1997. E-Business Categories at Cisco We can categories Cisco’s e-business initiatives under few main categories. e – Procurement, e – HR, e – SCM. E – SCM All the internal information systems of Cisco can be access by all the suppliers and other partners who are in Cisco’s supply chain. This system can be identified as a distributed knowledge management system since the employees have the same access rights to information as Cisco employees. Cisco was able to integrate all collective capabilities of supply chain partners and integrates all supply chain activities with this system. This system standardizes and streamlines all the internal processes with Cisco Employee Connection (CEC). It also streamlines external processes by seamless integration with suppliers and customers in terms of Manufacture Connection Online (MCO) and Cisco Connection Online. Materials and inventory position, product availability, price information, purchase orders and changes, vendor receipt/acceptance, Invoice payments and status reporting information are all visible among partners, including design-related information and sales forecasts. Since lack of mutual trust and unwillingness to share information among the partners appear to be the greatest obstacles in the way of e-collaboration, Cisco formed strategic alliances and long-term partnerships with their suppliers and customers, based on mutual trust and win-win strategy. e- HR with Cisco Employee Connection CEC was initially launched in 1995 and it was designed to store company information. But when HR department was in trouble with handling a various HR tasks manually, Cisco tried to move their HR processes to the CEC. As a result of that Cisco successfully launched expense reporting system first. With the success of that sub system Cisco started to digitize all their HR activities. CEC provides details and many interactive tools which can be use to facilities, travel arrangements, technical documentation, human resources, training, sales and marketing, and financial matters. Other than the standard categories like products, business functions, and company and employee information, CEC also provide some other categories for specific tasks. One category is for their new recruitments. It provides details about the company and also it consists of frequently asked questions. Professional staff category provides job-specific tools relating to sales, engineering, management, and system engin eering. Cisco’s Customer Base In early ages Cisco sold router products to corporations for corporate LANs and WANs. But with the rapid growth of the Internet since mid of 1990s, Internet service providers (ISPs) became an important market for the Cisco. Due to the technological advancements in the telecommunication industry, data and voice networks has gained speed. Therefore local exchange carriers and traditional telephone companies also become important segment in Cisco’s customer base. In the present company have differentiate its customers into four major segments those are 1.Enterprises. 2.Service providers. 3.Small/medium-sized businesses. 4.Home consumers. All categories of customers having their own complex challenges, when it comes to implement and maintain global data networks, since the technology that they are dealing with rapidly change over the time. Charles Giancarlo says that â€Å"it takes an unusual level of dedication, effort, and focus from both sides in order to build some of these networks. Both sides must make an inordinate investment in order to be first to market.† When it comes to service providers or the corporate market Cisco deals with consumers who know what to do and how to do. Therefore Cisco can’t manage them as normal home consumers. These relationships are more complex that normal consumer relationships. They decide from where to buy equipment based not only the quality of the products but also factors such as companies who are willing to supply their financing and other services. Sometimes they consider firms who are assisting them in dealing with government to acquire rights of way for wiring. Therefore Cisco started to consultative, partnering role with Telco customers. Cisco trying to assists them with everything. It spread from networking products and installation to financing, support services, even up-to business-model planning. It is not enough to merely offer them a new service that can enhance quality on their network. Cisco must also advise them on how best to profit from it. Strengths / Positive Aspects When it comes to the discussion of the positive aspects of the E business module, it can be accomplished after analyzing these three types. The benefits of e-commerce can be seen to affect three major stakeholders’ organizations, consumers and society. Cisco market place became that an international marketplace without any influence, single physical marketplace located in a geographical area has now become a borderless marketplace including national and international markets. By becoming e-commerce enabled, businesses now have access to people all around the world. In consequence all e-commerce businesses of Cisco have become effective multinational companies. Operational cost saving is a big advantage because of this. The cost of creating, processing, circulating, storing and retrieving paper-based information has reduced. E-commerce has transformed the way consumers buy goods and services. The pull-type processing allows for products and services to be customized to the cust omer’s wants. Enables reduced inventories and overheads by facilitating ‘pull’-type supply chain management this is structured on collecting the customer order and then delivering through JIT (just-in-time) manufacturing. This is particularly valuable for companies in the high technology sector, where stocks of components held could quickly become obsolete within months. No more 24-hour-time constraints. Businesses can be contacted by or contact customers or suppliers at any time. Consumers can gain access to the websites on anytime, 24 in 7.Makes it possible for customers to shop or conduct other transactions 24 hours a day, all year round from practically any location. Checking balances, making payments, obtaining status and other details are some important characteristics which we can see because of using this kind of E business module, but also an international selection of suppliers, Price comparisons can be done. Customers can ‘shop’ around the world and conduct comparisons either directly by browsing different sites, or by visiting a single site where price ranges are aggregated from a number of providers and compared. Delivery processes can be improved. An environment of competition where significant discounts can be founder value added, as different retailers vie for customers. It also allows many individual customers to aggregate their orders together into a single order presented to wholesalers or manufacturers and obtain a more competitive price. This system enables more adaptive enough working practices, which enhances the quality of life for a whole host of people in society, enabling them to work from home. Not only is this more effortless and offers happier and less stressful working environments, it also potentially reduces environmental pollution as fewer people have to travel to do their ordering and other stuff. Enables people in developing countries and rural areas to enjoy and access products, services, information and other people which otherwise would not be so easily available to them. It encourages delivery of public services. When we analyze about the strengths thoroughly, and when we consider it as organization vise that site saved Cisco time and reduced the need to hire. Customers welcomed the opportunity to browse a website and solve problems on their own rather than dialing into a busy support line. Seeing the cost advantage of selling online Cisco began to provide its network products for sale on its websites and web sales grew rapidly until they accounted for the majority of Cisco’s sale. Cisco also began to look for other ways to take advantage of its website. The sales force complained that they were always asked by customers to perform routine tasks, such as re-printing a customer invoice. Cisco widened the online offerings and allowed customers to reprint invoices, ch eck the status of service orders, and even maintain and price products. In addition to making life easier for customers, Cisco employees were able to escape much data entry. Cisco soon made much more customer information available online by linking customers to the Oracle ERP system. The IT department of Cisco began to investigation with other ways to leverage the power of the Internet. The department’s efforts guided to three separate Internet initiatives: Cisco Connection Online (CCO, for customers), Cisco Employee Connection (CEC), and Manufacturing Connection Online (MCO). In those days, customers still had to talk with a sales rep whenever they wanted to make an order. In part due to the complexity of Cisco’s product or service line (all orders were in importance custom orders), only 75 percent of orders were entered correctly; the remaining 25 percent had to be re-entered. As a result, Cisco started to consider about how it could use technology to improve the purchasing procedure. An e-commerce site was completed and launched in July 1996. The site was simple but advanced enough to ensure products were precisely set up. As a result, Cisco was able to drop its customer-order error rate from 25 percent to 1 percent. Even though Cisco believed that the site was not as user-friendly as it could be, 60 percent of Cisco’s technical support was now delivered automatically via the web, Cisco’s customer satisfaction ratings were rising, and Cisco’s productivity was improving considerably as was their customers. The Cisco Employee Connection (CEC) was Cisco’s intranet site. Initially, it was deliberate to hold company info and act as an internal newsletter. It consisted only of a bulletin board of information, simple search engines, and email. But as the CCO grew in popularity and function not long after, the team tried to update the process of expense settlement. The team faced many challenging technical problems, such as linking expense app rovals with the American Express corporate card systems, and was met with significant internal resistance to change. Senior executives, who were responsible for approvals, demanded that any new system prove easier to use than the old paper-based system. Consequently, many approvals were eliminated. Cisco’s software engineers were forced to design the program internally because there were no regular programs that could handle the task. They succeeded. Cisco employees were able to submit expenses online and get refunded by direct deposit within a few days. Cisco’s Manufacturing Connection Online (MCO) was crucial in allowing Cisco to grow. Just as Cisco had problems hiring enough engineers and customer service reps, it also had long been affected by problems expanding its manufacturing operations quickly enough to meet the surging demand for its products. Faced with a choice of restricting growth or outsourcing manufacturing, Cisco chose to outsource. Originally, Cisco outsourced only a portion of the manufacturing process. Cisco still warehoused components and performed final assembly and testing before shipping finished goods to its customers. Soon, however, in order to cut costs and improve delivery times, Cisco wanted deeper relationships with its partners. They asked partners to incorporate their IT systems with it. The result was an automated order fulfillment system known as the Manufacturer’s Connection Online (MCO). The MCO allowed Cisco’s partners direct access to customer information, sales projections, and product specifications. Partners could also alert Cisco to work stoppages, part shortages, and other issues. Once a customer placed an order on the Cisco.com site, the manufacturing partner was immediately notified electronically. The manufacturer’s network immediately transmitted the order to the actual assembly line. Later, Cisco developed a system for automatically testing products to ensure they were up to Cisco’s specifications and ready to ship without the product ever leaving their manufacturing partner’s premises. Once an order was ready for shipment, Federal Express, Cisco’s shipping partner, was automatically notified, the order was assigned a shipping number, picked up at the manufacturer, and delivered by Federal Express to the customer. In the event of an assembly line problem or auto test concern, the manufacturer immediately alerted Cisco through the MCO, which then alerted the customer. Because the MCO and the CCO were integrated, customers could check on their order’s status at any time. In addition to the Cisco Connection Online, the Cisco Employee Connection, and the Manufacturing Connection Online Cisco’s accounting and HR departments featured an amazing level of automation. Cisco executives could view up-to-the-minute sales figures from around the world at any time. Additionally, Cisco was able to close its books within a day. Automated functions within HR included the capability to accept job requests online and to review and sort applicants by crucial variables, such as skill level or former employer. Flexibility was as critical as functionality to Cisco’s e-business systems. These all the capabilities are rewarded to the Cisco because of the E-business module. Weaknesses / Negative Aspects There was much hype surrounding the Internet and e-commerce over the last few years of the twentieth century. Much of it promoted the Internet and e-commerce as the solution for all ills, which raises the question. Limitations of e-commerce to organizations Lack of sufficient system security, reliability, standards and communication protocols, and security holes in software. It leads to confidential client information growing to be available to all. Rapidly evolving and changing technology, so there is always a sense of trying to ‘catch up’ and not be left behind. The simplicity with which business models can be copied and emulated over the Internet increases that pressure and curtails longer-term competitive advantage. Facing increased competition from both national and international competitors often leads to price wars and subsequent unsustainable losses for the organization. There is no real control of data that is collected over the Web or Internet. Data protection laws are not universal and so websites hosted in different countries may or may not have laws which protect privacy of personal data. Physical contact and relationships are replaced by electronic processes. Customers are unable to touch and feel goods being sold on-line or determine voices and reactions of human beings. There is no good faith between the two parties, because they are bonding with faceless computers. As people become more used to communicating electronically there could be an erosion of personal and social skills which might eventually be detrimental to the world we live in where people are more comfortable interacting with a screen than face to face. There is a possible threat that there will be enhance in the social divide between technological haves and not’s. So people who do not have technical skills become unable to secure better-paid jobs and could form an underclass with potentially dangerous implications for social stability. When we turn towards the Cisco, while the decentralized system, combined with an emphasis on staying close to the customer, had been incredibly successful for Cisco so far, it was not without problems. First, as the company grew, it became more complex, and the advancement process became more puzzled. Much of the organization was impacted when new initiatives were introduced. A major challenge was simply staying connected maintaining employees throughout the organization cognizant of current initiatives and the significance of those initiatives. In addition, it was corporate for different business units to follow initiatives that were substantially the same. Conflicts or duplications often had to be resolved by the IT department as various endeavors were implemented on Cisco’s website. There were also questions about the types of initiatives produced under the decentralized system. Because they were often influenced by customer feedback, these initiatives tended to be of the incremental, short-term variety. It was not clear how much effort was being devoted to creating true breakthrough approaches, nor was the appropriate level of effort clear. Moreover, it was becoming clear that there were opportunities to co-develop, co-design, and co engineer new e-business processes with external organizations, including clients and partners, but it was not clear exactly how to approach these possibilities or how to make them routine. Opportunities Traditional supply chains which are involving in product development, production, distribution, and sales cycles are not capable of dealing with dynamic customer demand in the current context. Businesses need to run parallel activities and higher level of flexibility in their operations in order to co-up with the rapid changes in demand. Procurement, inventory management, production and distribution are getting affected due to this nature. Businesses can accommodate e-business models deal with those demands. Cisco is also using the e-business to handle parallel activities in order to archive their business targets. 1. Cisco TAC service This is an online service, where users with a valid service contract can, get Cisco’s engineering services by describe their issues and attach files to the service request, and those requests will route the appropriate engineer as soon as possible. Users can get the help of tools that are available on Cisco.com in order to do these requests. In this way Cisco is able to manage their support calls and cases very quickly. Cisco TAC engineers are attending to the case very quickly and they even login to the faulty device using Cisco WEBEX sessions in critical issues. Cisco provides their warranty items in least amount of time to make sure the zero down time of the network. Customer satisfaction is main advantage of this service, reputation of Cisco networks are increased due to this process. By using these kinds of techniques Cisco makes their tasks very easy to manage. Cisco has great opportunity to attract more consumers and retain their existing consumers with the help of this kind of services. 2. New inventions Early 2006 Cisco introduced new product called Cisco TelePresence which has the ability to communicate with the broader community of Cisco TelePresence users with Life-size, high-definition video and CD-quality audio in a premium room environment using Collaborative tools such as presentation sharing and high-definition document cameras Services available by the hour in easily accessible public business-class locations. Recently Cisco introduced new data center family switches named as â€Å"Cisco nexus† in 2008 which will meet customer demands for next-generation mission-critical data centers. The Cisco Nexus 7000 Series, the flagship data center-class switching platform combining Ethernet, IP, and storage capabilities across one unified network fabric. Also nexus family virtual switches were introduced by Cisco to enhance the network virtualization. â€Å"Nexus 1000 V† is a virtual switch that can be used to control the data traffic among virtual machines in a data ce nter environment. Cisco nexus, Virtual switches, Cisco Techwise TV, Datacenters and clouds Virtualization, Virtual desktop infrastructure are some of the new areas that Cisco working in these days. Cisco has very good opportunity to have very good market share and profit through their new products. Ability of expand Cisco’s business in vertical and horizontal is one of Cisco’s biggest opportunities. Cisco already created the need for networking solutions to the world. They can continue on that way. They have the opportunity to introduce a complete network solution, with all the network equipments and software that need. Cisco has the ability to offer a much wider range of products since they have already acquired lot of network equipment companies. Cisco also can involve in data mining. The amount of data in the world is exploding. As more data becomes available, the ability to handle them in fast and efficient manner is so much important. Therefore Cisco can use do research work on how to use their network infrastructure to utilize that. Demand for the Cloud Computing is another opportunity. Since it is relatively new dimension and not that much competitors in that arena Cisco can play a big role in that segment. Wi-Fi Home Calling Mobile phones, Mobile Broadband are some other areas where Cisco has opportunities to increase their current market share as well as to capture new market segments. Threats Though Cisco dominates the router market, if they does not consider about the competitors they may lose the market, because small companies can take over a specific niche market. Keep implementing many changes to the Cisco e-business infrastructure is another treat. Employees, suppliers take considerable time period to get use to the new systems. Therefore if changes are happening quite often then people may get fed up with those changes since they have to adopt their work according to the new systems. Cisco’s high dependability on their suppliers is another treat. If one or many suppliers get refuse to supply the products due to some reasons then Cisco can’t deal with the demand, since more than 90% of the orders are directly fulfill by the suppliers without intervention of Cisco. Some other treats are †¢Cost of managing highly interconnected complex systems, software systems and managing customer centers/call centers is very much high. †¢Separate partnerships for borderless networking, data center and virtualization and collaboration can leads to disputation. †¢Since Cisco doesn’t sell directly to end customer, they cannot contact Cisco directly. This may leads to customer dissatisfaction. Recommendations Cisco is highly depend on their e-business strategies that are been implemented since last two decades. Those initiatives lead Cisco towards being the giant in internetworking industry. Company has automated almost all their processes with the help of IT. This is very effective and efficient in terms of time saving and cost reduction but on the other hand Cisco will be in trouble, if some issues occur in their systems. Therefore they should have alternative methods to continue their businesses even in that kind of scenario. In general it is very hard to think of alternatives when everything works smoothly enough with the power of IT, but with the rapid growth of security vulnerabilities in the internet, it is always nice to have at least a single way to continue the business processes without getting affect by those vulnerabilities. In 2001 Cisco’s stock price collapse dramatically. They lost nearly $400 billion in market value. There was lot of arguments about the company’s management, and of the inability of its information systems to anticipate and respond more effectively. An information system is only as good as the data entered into it, and if the people gathering the information fail to pick up on market signals or are unwilling to be the bearers of bad news, then the system won’t provide the warning signs that might mitigate the impacts of a major market shift. Therefore Cisco must implement a way to respond to the market changes very quickly, unless they may lose their market. Cisco’s competitors such as 3Com, AT&T provide interfaces to connect their equipments with the 3rd party vendors. But some of the Cisco equipments can’t connect like that with the 3rd party vendors. This is a drawback for them. There is a possibility of consumers may turn to some other tools due to that. Therefore Cisco should provide the facility to their equipments to interface with other vendorâ €™s. Another thing that Cisco can do is provide facility to directly communicate with Tellab’s devices. At the moment Cisco nodes can’t directly communicate with Tellab’s nodes without in-between bridge because auto generate magic numbers aren’t matching. Consumers need to have a more than average networking and technical knowledge in order to implement Cisco systems, unlike other vendors’ network equipments. Consumers who are not having appropriate knowledge about the implementation and maintenance should get help from others when they are dealing with Cisco products. This may leads consumers to go for other vendors who are producing products which can be use much easier than Cisco products. Therefore Cisco must provide easy configurations for their products or they should assist their consumers free of charge in those incidents. Then Cisco can retain their existing customers and customers will not get frustrated when working with their products. One of the main concerns is that Cisco doesn’t sell their products directly to the home users. If a home user wants to buy a Cisco product he/she must contact a Cisco partner and get the product through that partner. This should be changed. Cisco must provide all direct buying facility to all of its’ consumers, not only for the B2B consumers. Cisco can enhance their online presence in order to serve home consumers so they can directly buy Cisco products through their website. Cisco can get more sales by direct sales to home consumers since direct sales leads Cisco to promote their new products to those consumers through online marketing and promotion campaigns. They can also motivate their sales partners to attract more consumers by providing special discounts schemas for partners who are bringing more sales to the company. If we consider about Cisco’s website it has some issues in search facility. Most users are unable to search what they want through the provid ed search functionality in the website. Cisco should carefully study about what users really searching for in their website. Then company should upgrade or rework on their search functionality so user can experience more accurate search results. Cisco doesn’t provide support for the products that they no longer produce. They only provide support until after 1 year they stop the production. In networks 1 year old equipment is almost like a new product. Normally standard network equipment can be use for about 3 – 5 years. Therefore consumers who are having relatively new products can’t get Cisco support when they are having issues in their products. Sometimes Cisco completely stops support for some business units. Then consumers who are belongs to that unit will not get any patches, updates or technical assistance. If Cisco can provide patches, updates and technical assistance to all their products without eliminating any products or business units that would make consumers to believe that they are always look after by Cisco. Therefore consumers’ perception about the company will grow. Another major issue with Cisco products is that existing Cisco products can’t be upgrade easily. Consumers have to consider about various factors when they want to upgrade their existing equipments. They can’t easily replace existing node with another node. If they do so whole system can get affected due to compatibility issues. Most of the times if a network consist of Cisco equipments and there is an issue in single point it simply can’t be replaced by another same type product from another vendor. Users always have to replace it by a Cisco product. It is true that it brings sales to Cisco but on the other hand users may get fed up. Sometimes users may want to replace some nodes with some other vendors’ products due to some reasons. Therefore Cisco must think about that kind of incidents and provide necessary solutions. Cisco always tries to go with their proprietary protocols rather than open standards. This leads collision in communication between thei r products and other products. Since Cisco is not the one and only player in the network industry, Cisco should provide their consumers the facility to connect Cisco equipments with any other products without compatibility issues. This can be achieved by in lining Cisco products with open standards. The alternative to the current decentralized system was some sort of centralized organization that focused on innovation. But there were any number of ways in which the charter of this new organization could be configured. What specific activities would it be responsible for? Who would staff it? How would it be funded? How would it be evaluated? Could it be configured in such a way that efficiencies and elusive â€Å"white space† opportunities were captured without destroying the innovative spirit at Cisco or its decentralized culture? Losing either could outweigh any benefits of centralization. Cisco can consider about a Technology Research and Training Team that can study about emerging technologies and keeps business managers informed of what would soon be possible.