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To: Robert Rose who wrote (62087)	6/12/1999 10:51:00 AM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164687

Cisco CFO using technology to boost efficiency By Duncan Martell PALO ALTO, Calif., June 11 (Reuters) - Larry Carter, chief financial officer for computer-networking kingpin Cisco Systems Inc.,<CSCO.O> heads up a small army of 600 accountants and other bean counters in the company's finance group. And he wants to liberate them. Right now, Carter says, too many of them -- about 80 percent -- are held hostage to the quarterly ritual of any publicly traded company: closing the books so it can report earnings to shareholders of the San Jose, Calif. firm. Since the 56-year-old Carter came on board in 1995 from struggling chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc.,<ADM.N> he's been hammering on what he calls the "virtual close." By using its own technology, using powerful software that helps run purchasing, payroll, human resources and other functions and by using other Web-enabled tools, Carter is aiming to get to a point where he and his minions have all the information they need at any given time to close the books every day, if need be. Freed up from the inefficient drudgery of tabulating data and crunching numbers on spreadsheets, these same 600 could then "work on financial analysis of different parts of our business and on boosting productivity," Carter said. Already, Carter noted recently from his cubicle-like office in Cisco's sparkling new headquarters, the company has made progress. When he joined Cisco, it took the company eight to 10 days to close the books -- about average for a large, established U.S. company. Now, that's down to two days. By next quarter, Carter says he can winnow that down to one. While such efforts may sound esoteric, even arcane, Carter claims that knowing exactly what the business is doing at any given point is an extreme competitive advantage. "Knowing where you are at any point in time is very important to me and is, in fact, a competitive advantage," Carter said in a recent interview. He cites the economic crisis in Asia, and especially in Japan, as an example; because Carter can drill down to specific regions, products and even salespeople on nearly a real-time basis, Cisco claims it saw the troubles there nine months before other businesses. Knowing where the company is also is of great interest to Cisco's chatty, affable and palm-pressing Chief Executive, John Chambers. In fact, daily sales data is the first thing Chambers punches up on his PC in the morning at his office, which is right next to Carter's. "All these guys (Cisco salespeople) know that this is the first thing John looks at in the morning," Carter said. Cisco's finance costs still run about 2 percent of revenues -- standard for most companies -- but by using its own technology, developing its own in-house software and by using Oracle Corp. products, Carter aims to get that down to 1 percent. And all of this is only the beginning, Carter observed. Sure, he said, online auctioneers such as eBay Inc.<EBAY.O>, Amazon.com Inc. <AMZN.O> and others are signing up new members at a blistering pace. But imagine how much a company could benefit if it used the same Internet auction model to buy office equipment and let suppliers slug it out for the winning, lowest bid. Carter said that's only one of the latest ideas he's tinkering with as part of his effort to streamline Cisco's business. "The future of this is pretty exciting," Carter said. "This is the power of electronic commerce." Cisco stock rose 25 cents to $110.6875 a share Friday on Nasdaq.