Striving for better visibility and financial accountability of assetsCisco Systems, Inc. is the worldwide leader in networking with equipment and solutions for routers, switches, wireless access, voice conferencing and network security. Recently, the 63,000-person, $11.5 billion firm set out to optimise and protect investments in IT equipment used at their data centres and R&D labs.

The business drivers of this fixed asset tracking project were multiple. Cisco wanted ongoing visibility over where the equipment they had purchased is located, who is using it, and how it is being used. They also required accurate tracking of assets for financial accountability, to comply with the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

GS1 EPC/RFID solution selected to meet concrete business needsTasked with overseeing the project, Director of Operations Maryanne Flynn and Director of IT, Marketing and Cisco.com Ted Baumuller first studied the current processes deployed across Cisco, identified real-life problems that Cisco employees were facing with asset tracking, and considered the company’s global business needs.

For example, in their interviews with Cisco users, they discovered that when moving a blade server from one location to another, many employees did not correctly perform the time-consuming processes necessary to log the change. A solution built on RFID technology would automate the process, making manual logging unnecessary.

Case Study: Fixed Asset Tracking in IT With EPC/RFID, Cisco can locate IT assets anywhere at any time

“We focused on usability with our business process analysis, and we built our system on

foundational elements such as GS1 standards that will continue to function despite an evolving

technology landscape.”

Maryanne Flynn, Cisco

Contact information:

To learn more about this case, contact Maryanne Flynn, Director of Operations, Cisco Systems, Inc at maflynn@cisco.com

Interested in exploring a solution for your business problem based on GS1 EPC/RFID standards? Contact your local GS1 organisation at www.gs1.org/contact

© Copyright 2012 GS1 AISBL - GS1 is a registered trademark of GS1 AISBL

With special thanks to:

Clear cost-benefits that imply an expected return on investment in

two to three years

Dick Cantwell, Global Vice President of Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group, was key in this decision. Prior to joining Cisco, Cantwell had overseen RFID projects at Gillette and at Procter & Gamble; he also was Chairman of the EPCglobal Inc. Board of Governors. An RFID solution based on GS1 EPC/RFID standards was selected to meet Cisco’s needs.

The solution, developed with RFID Global Solution, is based on passive EPC/RFID Gen 2 tags, which are cheaper and smaller than active tags. Individual pieces of networking equipment were tagged and encoded with a GS1 Global Individual Asset Identifier (GIAI), a unique number drawn from the GS1 System of standards. Fixed portal readers were installed at entrances and exits of approximately 70 Cisco facilities. The tags are automatically read every time an asset moves through a portal into or out of one of the company’s facilities, and the information gathered is centralised in a database. The system also includes automated alerts, for example in case an asset that should not be moved leaves its location. Handheld readers are used for manual inventory.

Clear benefits thanks to automated asset trackingThe main objective of the project has been met with frank success. Today, Cisco employees don’t need to spend as much time tracking their IT assets, because the GS1 EPC/RFID-powered solution does it for them, in a more automated fashion.

The company now has real-time visibility over the location and use of all its IT assets. Employees can quickly find the location of a particular piece of equipment and know if it is available for borrowing, and this saves time as well as money. Using equipment available internally, they can avoid inadvertently ordering identical pieces and obtain them faster.

To comply with financial control regulations, Cisco needs to conduct regular inventories of assets. The new system has cut the time needed to perform a cycle count at a given site from a few weeks to a few hours. Overall, Cisco expects their EPC/RFID asset tracking system to deliver a full return on investment over two to three years.

The data provided by the EPC/RFID solution has also opened up a new realm of opportunities for Cisco. For example, a “virtual library” of IT equipment could provide accurate data on stock, availability and location, allowing Cisco to manage storage in a decentralised manner rather than in a more costly central warehouse.

Cisco’s successful asset tracking application has achieved strong recognition across the industry, and in April 2012, it won the RFID Journal Award for Best RFID Implementation.

GS1 EPC/RFID standardsGS1 is a neutral, not-for-profit organisation that develops supply chain standards. EPCglobal, a subsidiary of GS1, is leading the development and adoption of industry-driven standards for real-time, automatic identification of information in the supply chain to support the use of RFID. For more information on GS1 EPC/RFID standards, visit www.gs1.org/epcglobal