Centralizing Ciscos IT Planning Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Centralizing Ciscos IT Planning - Case Study Example Boston thought of fixing already operational data and infrastructure in order to assist the organization waste time and money on new applications. Additionally, achieving a cross-functional IT environment could be impossible to achieve in case teams would be allowed to continue using customized software and tools. The second action by Boston involved prioritizing organizational IT platform projects. A list of â€Å"Inhibitors† was used by each function to assist in selecting vital strategic initiatives. it is noteworthy that this action of Boston guided Cisco identify three vital enterprise projects which include upgrading the Oracle ERP system, establishing an enterprise reporting and business intelligence solution, and developing a â€Å"single source of truth† customer database (â€Å"e-customer†) (Mcafee, Mcfarlan & Wagonfeld 5). The second action of Boston was vital for organization performance in the sense that it reduced minimizing time wasting and confusion associated with the sources of customer data. Boston realized that there were many irrelevant data in the organization that needed to be cleared up (Kharif). Boston’s third initiative focused on developing a new funding process for all the organization’s IT projects. Before Boston took a leadership role in Cisco each function in the organization used to control, their own IT decisions including funding and this system had been an operation for close to a decade. However, Boston thought of centralizing funding system for the IT projects as a bold move towards linking multiple functions together. BPOC was instituted in 2002 as a high-level advisory committee to the organization in respect to matters of enterprise-wide productivity and prioritized organizational issues. Member of the BPOC was drawn from senior executives representing major organization functions.