John Chambers

John Chambers speech

" Productivity increases will drive economic growth in the future, and technology will be the driving force behind those gains"

"....wave after wave of applications will deliver productivity gains to businesses. And Cisco practices what it preaches. When the economy went south, Cisco continued to invest in applications that now saves us $2 billion per year"

Through these networked applications, companies can become "networked virtual organizations" that focus on their core competencies and rely on partners and technology for other tasks.

We save $275 million per year by using systems to "out-task" manufacturing and order fulfillment while maintaining control through tightly integrating applications and networks with suppliers. Maintaining that control distinguishes "out-tasking" from simple outsourcing .

In-house, Cisco now handles 73 percent of customer support requests through Web-based applications, bringing the cost per transaction down from $250 for a human-assisted technical support call to about $7 per incident.