He was certainly right about the growth. The company has experienced a 56 percent annual compounded climb in revenues in the past five years, during which time it acquired 68 companies. But Carter takes pride in having prepared for a range of other possible problems that might result from that growth. And he credits his preparedness in part to his experience with Motorola's Six Sigma quality improvement program, which that company applied not only to manufacturing, but also to each functional group in the company. Anyone in manufacturing will tell you if you reduce the cycle time to manufacture a product, good things happen.
Costs go down, inventory goes down, productivity improves, and quality goes up.
With this view in mind, Carter set to work reengineering many of the financial processes at Cisco and compressing their cycle times. Wherever possible, he used the web to automate transactions, pushing the finance organization toward that one-day close. Then, in 1997, Carter had a revelation. Suddenly, it dawned on me that by having this information, selecting the right metrics, and making sure they were in the management reporting system, we could change the way we ran the company. But Carter is also careful to avoid information overload.