There are a lot more things than people. On a more corporate scale, Cisco is creating its vision for what a networked economy company looks like. Over the past four years, Cisco has driven networks and the uses of them through every aspect of the company. On the inside, all job prospects apply over the Internet or on internal networks. Chambers says he can look up any applicant and sort applications by skills or by which competitors they're coming from.
Accounting uses the network to gather instantaneous financial data from Cisco outposts worldwide.
Chambers says Cisco can use that data to close its books in one day. Most global companies need two weeks to do it. Training at Cisco is done over the network using Web-based courses. Most customer service requests are dealt with over the network. As the world moves deeper into the networked economy, changes will become more fundamental.