With KPMG on board, the team of about 20 people turned to the software market with a multipronged
approach for identifying the best software packages. The team’s strategy was to build as
much knowledge as possible by leveraging the experiences of others. They asked large corporations
and the “Big Six” accounting firms what they knew. They also tapped research sources such as the
Gartner Group.6 By orienting the selection process to what people were actually using and
continuing to emphasize decision speed, Cisco narrowed the field to five packages within two days.
After a week of evaluating the packages at a high-level, the team decided on two prime candidates,
Oracle and another major player in the ERP market. Pond recalled that size was an issue in the
selection. “We decided that we should not put Cisco’s future in the hands of a company that was
significantly smaller than we were.”