Cisco Information system & Implementation

Cisco Information Systems and Implementation:

  Cisco Inc. is exactly like any other company in terms of its needs; it uses information systems, internet and some other tools to do its business in a similar way to regular companies. As we all know that Cisco excels in networking and switching solutions, some of the systems used are common and even applied in Cisco. As a main weapon in Cisco’s’ arsenal, they depend of the internet and its emerging uses heavily, e-business is one of its core strengths that is aimed to maximize customer satisfaction and minimizing the costs. “Cisco uses the web more efficiently than any other big company in the world” said (Fortune Magazine, n.d.). Cisco started at the beginning to sell its products online early 1995 by using Cisco connection online (CCO) system which was a storefront that allowed customers to interact and make orders online and by directly from their website. As a result, this online ordering system allowed Cisco to reduce the time of delivery by automating orders received from its website directly to suppliers and also allowing Cisco to have a very low inventory levels because they depend of actual orders. Another use of the internet is the creation of extranet among its supply chain partners called Cisco Manufacturing Connection Online (MCO); this system allowed for greater collaboration and planning online between Cisco and its suppliers by sharing most of the crucial information like inventory levels, forecasting reports or order fulfilling. However, Cisco also uses intranet to maintain the flow of information between its partners as well as employees, that’s why they have another system of Cisco’s that it uses to communicated with its employees through the intranet which is called the Cisco Employee Connection (CEC); this system makes it easier for employees to interact with the company’s important documents like editing profiles and even the system allows the employees to be trained online which saves a lot of training costs for Cisco plus, it enables Cisco to communicate with its managers through e-mails to update them on important events all of that is via intranet. Thus, the employee connection has showed great success by reducing the employee turnover rate in Cisco and cost reduction. Moreover, Cisco has invented a new real-time access to its database by all employees and managers to pull data, review, analyze and forecast important trends or revenue called virtual close. This has given Cisco a great relief in closing its books and financial records at the end of the year. (MBA knowledgebase, n.d.).

   If we are going to take a look inside Cisco’s Information Systems, we will notice that they are facing many problems other companies are too; from this point, their networking solutions were innovative and creative. One important thing that Cisco uses in its everyday activities is a secured network, in particular, telecommuting technologies. Cisco offers to its employees 4 teleworking solutions: 1^st is a software solution given to all employees allowing them to do and interact with certain things only as the application permits. 2^nd  is the mobile teleworker solution which is delivered to all employees enabling them to stay connected with the intranet at any place via a laptop or a desktop to check their work, receive and send e-mails between the staff. 3^rd is the hybrid teleworker solution which is an advanced solution that provides extended wireless access point to do their work from home. 4^th is the most advanced worker solution providing IP and tools to fully do the job from home that is called home office solution (CVO), a hardware solution that has a virtual office and phone like a VPN which has full security, it is able to support up to 25,000 clients and is functioning in 80 countries around the world. This solution is given for call center operatives, external contractor or employees. The home office solution has scored high satisfaction by users in a survey conducted on January 2012 by Cisco according to a video (Telecommuting Solutions, 2011). The study also showed that most of Cisco’s employees use teleworking solutions frequently (around 3 times a week). To conclude the teleworking solutions, we believe it is a type of MIS because it does facilitate routine job activities to be done remotely to help in decision making for the functional areas like order analysis, order fulfillment, providing service support and could be used for producing reports. However, it also plays a slight role as TPS (Transaction Processing System) system when it does order processing and fulfillment. Also this system allows the transformation from data about the working transactions into organized set of data becoming information. Definitely the teleworking system can serve as a knowledge base resource for Cisco since it excels in gathering data and transforming those into organized information, while applying those information in their filed of telecommuting solutions, it becomes knowledge. A second important information system Cisco implemented was on its own IT department. Since Cisco was growing large, a massive pressure was created upon the IT department to keep with Cisco’s vision, therefore, work was overloading, increased expenses and costs were apparent. Thus, a solution has to be made and it was none other than Cisco itself to provide the solution to its IT department. A personalized high-touch access to industry leading-network and operations was offered by its specialists which was the Focused Technical Support System (FTS) which enabled the specialist team to conduct a cause-root analysis and then inputting the results to the problem management system preventing common technical issues and problems to occur in the future (Cisco, 2011). A third IT system Cisco uses is the ASR (Aggregation Services Routers) which is a high capacity network infrastructure that supports Cisco’s shifting strategy of adapting visualized data centers and cloud computing attributes to effectively communicate and collaborate with its 70,000 employees and hundreds of partners (Cisco, n.d.). Clearly the ASR is a TPS system that automates daily and crucial activities.  Fourthly, Cisco foresees social Medias as a very important tool for the business as it helps in: better sharing of information, more efficient decision making and improved business relationships. Thus, the company was considering the implementation of web 2.0 as a tool for doing business as it comes with huge benefits mainly, for collaboration and communication purposes. Since their employees were recommending the social Media to be targeted by Cisco, Cisco eventually allowed its employees to use the social Media from work for their own purposes and for doing their job at the same time. Even though they are fully aware of the dark-sides of social Media such as misleading or inaccurate information, programming threats or identity thefts, Cisco overcame those obstacles by having Social Engineering and Intelligence Gathering in place which is a system for correcting the information displayed online. Another protective procedure is giving employees guidelines and policies like: Cisco Code of Business Conduct (COBC) and Cisco Social Media Handbook to illustrate and overcome the securities vulnerabilities (Cisco, 2012). This system organizes the way how data is used and to preserve knowledge. Another important system as a transaction processing system is the Unified Communication and Integration Application created by the IT department using Department Framework and Tools (DFT), which is a software that connects and aggregates all of Cisco’s most major and known products at the disposal of Cisco’s workforce. They have something called click-and-collaborate tool which enables the use of Unified Application Environment, Unified Presence Serve and Cisco’s WebEx which supports the HD streaming and viewing of videos with 360p and full screen compatibility all for the sake of increasing communication and collaboration effectiveness by providing their employees state-of-the-art technologies (Cisco, n.d). Thus, the DFT it is considered as MIS because it supports functional areas as well as the company as a whole.

   One last good example about Cisco’s Information systems is the Cisco IronPort S670 web security appliance that is the main defense system over the net. With the increasing freedom that Cisco gives to its employees in terms of choosing the preferred device to do the work with, the IronPort emerged to existence. The System uses Signature-based malware detection with anonymity filter to scan files. The web works like a proxy that blocks or permits the content after examining it. Also, the IronPort blocks whole WebPages unlike other software for other companies that block only specific content violation (Cisco, 2011).