a bigger role has
been given to us
over the years as
we have proven and
demonstrated our
ability to grow and
scale, and I attribute
that to technology.
—CISCO’S BISCa Y
pany’s burgeoning growth. “We still had a
lot of manual processes, faxes for example,”
Biscay says. “Analysts and treasury spent a lot
of time gathering data. The last 10 years or so
have been a constant evolution in complexity
and geography.”
Cisco now operates in 120 countries and
hedges nearly 100 currencies. Biscay says
the head count is flat for treasury’s five func-
tions, which comprise cash management,
investments, foreign exchange, insurance
and corporate finance. This includes $40 bil-
lion in investments, $15 billion in debt, and
billions in interest rate and foreign exchange
derivatives.
Cisco’s treasury has evolved “from a data
analyst to a true financial analyst,” he says.
“Investing in systems and technology has
elevated what we bring to the table in terms
of quality. A bigger role has been given to us
over the years as we have proven and demonstrated our ability to grow and scale, and
I attribute that to technology,” Biscay adds.
Cisco’s culture is “no technology religion,”
he says, so best of class rules, although, as
exemplified by TelePresence and WebEx, the
company does eat its own dog food.
Cisco intends to keep expanding despite
the slow recovery, says Calderoni. “Our
long-term objective is to grow our business
12% to 17% over three to five years,” he says.
“That would mean substantially increasing
the size of our company in that time period.”
Besides treasury, finance encompasses tax
and accounting, planning, business partner
engagement, procurement, global real estate
management and some operations, and it
employs just under 3,000 people worldwide.
“Finance and treasury play key roles in
helping the business prioritize and make
decisions to ensure we get the right return,”
says Calderoni. “We need to be able to accel-
erate to keep up. How we add technology to
how we plan is critical.”
Initially in the downturn, the focus was on
looking for better ways to manage resources
through portfolio rebalancing. “We had to
think about how to keep making investments
in technology so we wouldn’t lose our leader-
ship position and would be ready to grow
the business once we came out,” he says.
“Separately, we leveraged technology to man-
age our portfolio, and to achieve savings and
efficiencies throughout the company.”
More effective and efficient communica-
tions evolved. The goal is to be constantly
connected on any device, and video has been
a tremendous driver in the equation, says
Biscay. Treasury uses TelePresence not only
for internal meetings but to maintain rela-
tionships with its banks, many of which have
their own TelePresence setups. The video-
conferencing system is also useful for staying
in touch with the sell side and institutional
investors, Calderoni notes. TV programs such
as CNN News and CBS Nightly News now use
TelePresence to conduct interviews.
