pRoFILES
Cisco recently announced a decision to elevate video are absolutely critical for us and our partners to scale the com-
Greater China (including HK and Taiwan) to its own theater pany and create enough bandwidth to create new solutions to move
status, separate from the rest of Cisco Asia. Does this affect forward.
your department value chain at all?
This move is a clear recognition of the strategic importance of Which of the newer Cisco technologies have been the most
the China market and means we’re going to provide a higher level of helpful to you?
focus on it in the company, even higher than it was before– and that Loosely we could say the video/collaboration technologies; this in-
there will be additional resources to develop the volves everything from webex (a highly sophisticat-
whole ecosystem. However, this won’t affect our ed PC based collaboration tool) – which we use con-
department so much as we’ve been focused pretty
US$16
tinuously- to “TelePresence” which we’ve installed
heavily in terms of enabling business in China – it with all of our teams major partners and use when
just may mean that some of our plans get acceler-
ated.
billion
we really want to have the full affect of an in person
meeting without jetting six thousand miles. There’s
also a lot of interesting collaboration platforms we’re
A lot of people have been telling me the Supply
will be invested
developing on the web like an integrated workspace
Chain is not a very sexy field to go into because
in Cisco’s China
experience – which works on the vision that you
it isn’t flashy and it doesn’t allow for much cre-
programs over
come everyday and open up your workspace and it
ativity – if you were talking to a university stu-
the next 3-5 years
contains all the normal tools, groups, data and news
dent, how would you react to this comment? that you would need to access for your particular job
Well, I don’t know about sexy, but in the scope there in front of you for your particular alignment.
of my job, there’s a lot of opportunity to be very creative in the Many of our team members are expected to work in multiple dimen-
supply chain space depending on what part you are operating in. At sions. So, the ability to tailor and get tools and information to people,
Cisco we constantly have a need for creative thinking to set up rela- to collaborate interactively with people around the world, and the
tionships with customers to deal with issue resolution and co plan- ability to have a full featured meeting space is all incredibly critical.
ning. There is a creativity in the way we architect solutions, manage With this technology, you can read every expression and solve the
data, information flow and information systems, in the way we de- most difficult problems. So I think that the whole sweep of capabili-
sign our physical network and logical supply chains and in how we ties that enable collaborations is what’s really important and video is
manage our ecosystems – which often times has many different types a tremendous accelerator to that – you could say that this is one of
of partners. There’s creativity in how we facilitate and organize and the sexy parts of
lead our teams in this kind of environment. I think there are bound- my work.
less opportunities to be creative – I think sometimes when people
say its not a very sexy field, they’re referring to that fact that to some You teach a class for ex-
degree supply chain is about making truly excellent execution. Some- ecutives at the Supply Chain Leadership Institute (a joint
one once told me it’s like making the trains run on time – but there is venture with Stanford University and Fudan University.) What
still a tremendous amount of breakthrough outside-the-box thinking sort of skills do SC professionals need to advance their career?
and incremental creativity needed. There are certainly a lot of skills that SC professionals should have.
While supply chain people can come from almost any kind of back-
Cisco has been working a lot with new media outlets – how ground, most of them tend to be pretty systematic thinkers. But to
does this affect how you do your job? move forward, they have to be able to think about end-to-end solu-
As we enter into businesses that are tailored more towards con- tions on a broader level. In my opinion, there is also no substitute,
sumers, more solutions or products driven, or involve different kinds particularly in leadership, for experience – learning how to manage
of business that have different design/manufacturing paradigms, it a project, operating in different environments and countries, know-
means that we have to generate different supply chain solutions. Our ing not only theoretically but having experience with multiple disci-
executive team spends a lot of time thinking about the different busi- plines, geographies and tasks is really important and sometimes a bit
ness models in the company and how to design the supply chain to underrated in the world. There’s something to be said for someone
suit those – you don’t want to have 300 different supply chains, but who’s progressed through 10 or 20 different experiences, roles and
certainly one size does not fit all, so one of the things we’re focused geographies – it creates a different sense in a person and it often
on is rationalizing and designing end to end solutions for these dif- shortens significantly the learning time and prevents a lot of mistakes
ferent segments and different products. We do spend a lot of time on and allows people to be more creative and have more bandwidth. A
that, but it’s also a great opportunity. persons educational or career background doesn’t always matter.
Also, as a lot of these segments open up – well, we always eat
what we cook – and the technology we produce, in addition to being
For more information on executive education courses at the Cisco-Fudan-
Stanford Supply Chain Leadership Institute, visit their website www.cisco.com
exciting to the world in general, are a major aid that helps our team
and click on Cisco China Supply Chain Leadership Institute. The next session
run a far more global, complex and broad sort of supply chain – we
will be held from March 29-April 2 2010 in Shenzhen China. The curriculum
have partners around the world and a lot of these technologies like will be taught in Mandarin.
www.supplychains.com MARCH/APRIL 2010 17
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