The makeup of the team itself was integral to the success of the project, as leaders recognized the need for the team to be made up of both IT professionals as well as business professionals from different functional units. This partnership between IT and the end users was designed to ensure that the ERP would provide the infrastructure necessary to support successful implementation of the new system and the ensuing new business strategy. .
In a somewhat unusual scenario, the team was able to bypass many of the typical elements of a formal business case during their proposal to the CIO and the board of directors. They were able to do so because of the sense of urgency within the organization to upgrade the legacy system in order to avoid another catastrophic failure of the under-powered system. The recent failure of the existing system that shut down the company for two days provided a powerful mechanism for unfreezing the employees at Cisco, and convincing them of the necessity of a quick implementation of a powerful unified system for all business units. .
Another important success factor was the selection of a strong integration partner, KPMG, and a software vendor, Oracle, with a strong motivation to ensure success of the project. KPMG played a large role in the success of the project by assigning their most knowledgeable employees to the Cisco project, and installing a project manager with a strong background in ERP implementation. Although Cisco primarily selected the Oracle software for its strong manufacturing capability, since they were the first large firm to purchase the newest version of the software, Oracle was heavily invested in doing everything in their power to make the implementation a success. Finally, due to the cleverly negotiated contractual obligation of the hardware vendor to meet the required capacities, the team was able to save a significant amount of money in the event of under-performing hardware post-implementation.