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Gary Moore, Cisco's COO, spearheaded Cisco's restructuring process after being named to his current position in February 2011. On his watch, Cisco removed $1 billion in operating expenses and completed that process a quarter earlier than anticipated.
Moore said Cisco's operations team has 29 key performance indicators, measured every quarter to chart Cisco's progress.
"[We're] focused on ease of doing business," Moore told CRN in an exclusive interview during the show. "Simplifying the portfolio. Redirecting the R&D spend. Bringing more accountability to the way we operate."
Cisco's restructuring was handled using an all-internal committee with no outside consulting, and Moore said the team kept an eye on what particular moves were going to have the most impact soonest.
"We had to keep our operating expenses in line, had to redirect the company and then, at the end of that, think about how do we build this into our DNA," he said. "Today, as a leadership team, we're much better managed, and we have much better visibility and accountability into what we're doing. The whole team is focused on driving profits faster than revenue. And we focus on innovation and the things that really do drive the network."
Moore pulled several executives from the various engineering, sales and services teams -- for example, Angel Mendez, senior vice president, Cisco Transformation, who came over from the supply chain team -- to report into him and focus on "the things in the seams," Moore said.
"What are the hand-offs we're not making right?" he explained, when it comes to how various Cisco teams align to go after customer opportunities.
In a much-publicized move, Cisco also disbanded the thicket of councils and boards that had kept executives tied up in constant, decision-slowing meetings.
"That was a major decision to make," Moore said. "It put too much of a tax on our leadership. That's the pure and simple answer. Every one of those councils and boards had meetings, had roll-ups, had finance people. They had all this work going on that wasn't customer-facing."
Moore said Cisco has generated more than 1,000 ideas of how to improve the business by surveying its employees.
"We have 70 we're going to attack," he said. "It's heavy lifting, but it's good stuff."
NEXT: Cisco Distributors Weigh In
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