Cisco Systems

About the company

Cisco is the worldwide leader in IT that helps companies seize the opportunities of tomorrow by proving that amazing things can happen when you connect the previously unconnected. At Cisco customers come first and an integral part of our DNA is creating long-lasting customer partnerships and working with them to identify their needs and provide solutions that support their success.The concept of solutions being driven to address specific customer challenges has been with Cisco since its inception. Husband and wife Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, both working for Stanford University, wanted to email each other from their respective offices located in different buildings but were unable to due to technological shortcomings. A technology had to be invented to deal with disparate local area protocols; and as a result of solving their challenge – the multi-protocol router was born.

Project & results

1. Assignment

In early 2003, the business is not as it should be. Order intake in Norway was slightly declining, and customer and employee – satisfaction was lower in Norway than in other countries in Northern Europe. The management group was relatively new and had a need to get better acquainted with each other. We also needed to create a common vision and strategy for operations in Norway, built on common values – to create new engagement and bring business back to growth. We committed ResultatPartner to assist us with the process of developing the management team and strategy for the company. ResultatPartner talked us through the process and they managed to challenge us.

2. Results

Based on a new and thorough SWOT analysis , a new leadership definition and new team values established an ambition to double the order intake during the three years and to reach the highest customer satisfaction and the highest employee satisfaction for Cisco in Northern Europe. We established goals and action plans for the Norwegian organization. We broke down the goals of the individual departments and individual employees. In this way, each employee’s contributions and responsibilities was crystal clear to everyone. Our values; Open communication, Respect and Responsibility, were our tools to work our way forward towards our new goals. The results were that we more than doubled new orders during the first three years. In addition, we achieved our targets for both customer and employee satisfaction. Cisco Norway was the best country in northern Europe on both customer and employee satisfaction, and we achieved the highest productivity and profitability in Northern Europe.

3. Success factors – why it succeeded

There were several reasons for our success. The timing was good for the market. We quickly got a strong and very well coordinated team with a high degree of internal confidence. This was evident in surveys of employee satisfaction, and in 360 degree evaluations of our leaders. We managed to involve and engage employees to help us solve the challenges, for example in turning employee satisfaction among women from being lower to be higher than among men. We moved all the leaders out of their offices and into the office landscape. This created more open communication and accessibility. We work continuously with clear internal and external communication. In addition, we chose to remove the limitations of course budgets of our system engineers, and rather run with slightly lower staffing. To allow our outstanding specialists to accelerate the development of their market-leading expertise proved to our one redeeming power – which sparked engagement both internally and externally.

We chose ResultatPartner because their CEO, Ronny Nilsen challenged us from the first meeting – and all the way on. He challenged us to reflect, and he challenged us to deliver. It is precisely this ability to challenge that makes me recommend ResultatPartner”. Jørgen Myrland. CEO.