Cisco offices around the world would request entity-related documents via phone, fax and email. Cisco Corporate Legal would then locate the document in paper-based minute books, stored in three-ring binders, and fax the requested documents to the requestor. These requests could take two-three weeks to complete. They knew they wanted a better solution, but didn’t know how to get there.
Internally, Cisco’s Corporate Legal IT team did not have the resources to undertake the project. A member of their team was familiar with Xerox scanning technology, and partnered with Digital Strata to identify a solution that incorporated it. Over four months, two Digital Stratateam members worked to create a new system — Cisco Minute Books — that integrated the Xerox technology with a database and website to allow the legal staff wide access to corporate minute books and filings.
Now whenever Cisco’s Legal team has requests, they can be fulfilled using a self-service model: the team member can now simply access the Legal Operations portal on Cisco’s intranet, then locate the document they need and download it as a PDF. What would normally take them several days or weeks to retrieve, usually via fax, can now be accomplished via their computers in a matter of moments.
This project also by-passed the lengthy “scope and spec,” budget, bid, and develop process that is typical in corporate IT environments. Also, because this project was “workgroup”-specific, not an enterprise-wide deployment, it was low on Cisco’s IT priority list — meaning it could have taken a couple of years for the Legal team to get their new solution.
Instead, Digital Strata partnered with Cisco to develop and deploy using an agile development process that enabled them to release the solution’s first version within a couple of months, and then continuing to add functionality and features over time. Working in this way saved Cisco time and money, and got them off the ground far faster.