Blog #4: Developing Strategic Options (Part II)

For this week’s readings, “Cisco’s CEO on Staying Ahead of Technology Shifts” (Chambers, Harvard Business Review, May 2015) was the article with the most interesting key takeaways for me. The article starts off with the following quote from the CEO of Cisco, John Chambers: “Over the years, I’ve watched iconic companies disappear—Compaq, Sun Microsystems, Wang, Digital Equipment—as they failed to anticipate where the market was heading.” I completely agree with him, in that a leader needs to not only manage and lead a business through its successes and adversities, but also be courageous enough to take risks and predict the future of the market and its company.

While working in management consulting, I experienced a lot of data-related issues that had to do with technology shifts and clients not having stayed ahead of them. Often times, when companies grow through acquisition, the data from the different organizations is not consolidated and ends up being siloed and unable to connect to the data from other organizations within the conglomerate. With the rise of data analytics through big data, we can argue that “it’s tempting to view market disruptions as a threat, [rather than] view[ing] them as an opportunity.” Cisco views market disruptions as opportunities, and this is one of the things that made them, and continues to make them, very successful.

During one of my projects, I worked on a due diligence for a commercial kitchen manufacturer. They had grown through acquisition of twelve companies, and therefore had twelve different ERP systems. The data was in different formats and unable to communicate between one ERP system and another. This private equity-owned commercial kitchen manufacturer had not invested in staying ahead of the technology shifts. The client thought it was too much of a threat rather than an opportunity. It is arguably true that the efforts required to incorporate these twelve systems would further disrupt the business for a few years, accompanied by millions of dollars in implementation costs.

However, not integrating the ERP (or any IT) systems would cost more in the long run. For example, having consultants like me try to decode the data for weeks costs the business hundreds of thousands of dollars, multiplied by the several years of non-integration and need for consultants. The benefits of integration clearly outweigh the costs, not only for the business itself, but for the private equity company trying to get a return for their highly levered investment. John Chambers would agree with my perspective as well, given that “making tough decisions and immersing ourselves in a process of disrupting the market and at times ourselves” benefits the business and is important to stay ahead of technology shifts.

Moreover, while incorporating “lessons learned” after our project, we put together a lit of resources summarizing best practices and why there is such a strong need for clean data in corporations in order to stay ahead of technology shifts:

“Why Organizations Need to Clean Their Dirty Data” (https://www.cmswire.com/information-management/why-organizations-need-to-clean-their-dirty-data/)

“What is data cleaning and why is it important?” (https://sunscrapers.com/blog/why-is-clean-data-so-important-for-analytics-and-business-intelligence/)

“The Staggering Impact of Dirty Data” (https://www.marklogic.com/blog/the-staggering-impact-of-dirty-data/)

“The Ultimate Guide to Data Cleaning” (https://towardsdatascience.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-data-cleaning-3969843991d4)

In conclusion, John Chambers emphasizes his commitment to staying ahead of technology shifts on behalf of Cisco and its ability to “transform our entire business, expanding to capture growth, and thinking very differently about the future of information technology.”