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The Bridge is the premier publication devoted to exploring the intersection of business and technology strategies.

While many factors contribute to the success of the best performing organizations, Cisco found that successful organizations had several things in common. Each had a culture and structure focused on improving the end-customer experience. Each focused its own operations on functions where it could excel, and relied on partners to take on asks that did not differentiate it with customers. And each was standardizing its business operations, data, and information technology, allowing it to operate more efficiently, internally, with outside partners, and especially with customers. Those organizations that pursued all three of these strategies in parallel were often the most effective. Cisco, having used this three-pronged strategy long before consulting firms gave each part a variety of names, came to call it networked virtual organization (NVO).

Useful Links Video: The Government of Ontario Leading the Way

Some companies have deployed NVO strategy more broadly than others, but no organization is yet an NVO. It is an approach that every organization can use, not just a select few. It is a strategy that works for governmental agencies as well as businesses. Cisco has found that most organizations are already pursuing some elements of the NVO strategy. These six articles are some of the first to address big and important questions such as these: "How can we and our business partners react to changing markets in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost? How can I capture the cost reduction of outsourcing while retaining control of my differentiating business processes? How can I leverage our existing ERP, HR and CRM applications to eliminate cost and enable self-service?"

These articles are just the beginning of the discussion. Every working day more than 200 business consultants from Cisco are in the field working with leading companies and other organizations that are striving to find better ways of doing business. We will share the results of that work and the ensuing discourse in future issues of The Bridge.

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