Steelwedge’s Own Recognized: “Pro to Know”

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At Steelwedge, we’re obsessively focused on improving the way businesses perform in a volatile world. To power that mission, we marry the best of technology innovation with the brightest  deep domain experts to deliver for our customers.  The best rubric for our value: the success of our customers– some of the world’s hottest brands and biggest manufacturers dealing with some of the toughest global business challenges.

It’s icing on the cake when our work catches the attention of the broader industry.  Therefore we’re delighted that one of our own, Nari Viswanathan, was selected for the annual Supply & Demand Chain Executive list of “Pros to Know”  this week.  Nari’s spent his career in the Supply Chain industry with roles ranging from development and product strategy to researcher, consultant, author, presenter and analyst.  He taps all of that wealth of expertise for our customers every day as our VP of Product Marketing and Management.

Congrats, Nari.… Read the rest

Need to Handle Change? “There’s an App for That”

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Based on a recent Steelwedge survey of more than 160 business leaders:

-89% are either experiencing or seeing signs of external volatility/change impacting their business and
-91% are planning on internal change (products, channels, services, markets) to also create planning challenges

Given that the majority of respondents face the need to manage some sort of change within their demand-supply networks, why is it that their S&OP processes are based on the paradigm of “business as usual?”  Why is the emphasis on a very rigid, prescriptive approach to managing the S&OP process when business does not behave in that manner?  It is disheartening, but not surprising to see the schism between the corporate strategic goals and the goal of the S&OP process.

But this too, is beginning to change.

During a series of integrated business planning seminars in Europe last week (Feb 7th, 8th and 9th), we discussed these issues with an audience of manufacturers and distributors from London to the Netherlands and we got the same perspective on anticipating change. In fact, since Europe is reeling under a tough financial climate, they expect to see significant amounts of change and volatility happen. It was our observation that European IT organizations are more entrenched in traditional, inflexible ERP systems which constrains their ability to respond rapidly to market conditions.  Add to that, the challenge of managing a proliferation of stand-alone systems for demand planning, supply planning, and business intelligence that require significant integration to work together.

Business leaders however are looking for flexible tools that can accommodate inevitable change in their businesses. They are not trying to retrofit their existing process to a one size fits all approach through inflexible ERP and SCP applications but looking for ways they can augment industry best practices with innovations of their own.

At Steelwedge, we believe that S&OP technology should not only enable –but flex with– process. In other words, when new elements are added to the business like new products, new services, new channels, or other changes, it should be easy to identify the impact of each of those on the overall business.

Better yet, just like with your iPhone, wouldn’t it be great when it comes to your business decision making to identify a need and know: “there’s an app for that”?  We think so.

With the Integrated Business Planning platform we can build simple open architecture apps that address new changes to business processes. For example, we saw an emerging need across many of our consumer and discrete manufacturing customers for a demand policy optimization tool which stratifies the corporate product catalog into products that can be statistically forecasted versus those that have to be dealt with in a collaborative manner. The demand policy optimization app was built in a matter of weeks using the Enterprise Enabled Excel user interface and integrated with the overall workflow.

This is a rapid deployment approach taken to the next level where end users and partners can now adapt to changing business conditions and flex their S&OP process.  This is just the first of many apps that are bubbling to the surface as companies make the transition to more resilient planning tools and apps that help them manage change.

Across the industry we are seeing the shift towards adopting S&OP for growth rather than for getting control.  Are your plans agile enough to accommodate growth?  I’d love to hear from you.

 

Valentine’s Day and Your Day Job: What Does Your Planning Say About You?

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Last week, I had the pleasure of listening in on a thought-provoking discussion led by Chris Turner, co-founder of StrataBridge Consulting on the S&OP Control Paradox.  Chris dropped a series of compelling statistical breadcrumbs about the rapidly changing path for creating and operating a competitive global business.  His numbers showed the aggregate impacts of natural disasters, oil prices, internal complexity and technology adoption on businesses of all kinds.  But his main point wasn’t about WHAT is driving integrated business planning in global organizations: Chris urged the audience to take a hard look at HOW they were putting their planning to work.

Integrated Business Planning, which brings together strategic and operational planning into a single line of sight, got its start in the 1980’s as Sales & Operations Planning, with large companies looking to balance demand and supply planning for better organizational control.  For business in that era, having a solid annual  plan that controlled inventory, production and distribution from one view of demand made absolute sense.  But in today’s world of changing customer demand, growing global supply chains with intricate interdependencies, and massive disruption, can we afford to “lock in” our planning at the cost of limiting growth?… Read the rest

Time is the New Currency

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This week, the Wall Street Journal pegged it: Global companies took years building supply chains. In 2011, natural disasters took just days to break them all apart. Like it or not, VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) is the new normal, and more than ever before, time is the new currency.

Here’s what I mean by that: with the rapid outgrowth of linear supply chains into multi-enterprise networks, loss of control and visibility have become the top challenges for many supply chains. Proliferating risks in the demand-supply network and increasing lead-times due to expanding networks makes flexibility the key to overcoming challenges.

This was indeed a hot topic at the latest trade show I attended, Supply Chain Logistics 2011, where the theme was agility and flexibility.  Leaders of supply chain strategies and leading global companies were on hand to discuss, debate and deliver ideas about how they—and the industry at large—can tap different approaches, such as Integrated Business Planning, to ensure they are more agile. It is imperative that they are able to beat the clock and deliver better returns to their companies in a world where VUCA reigns and no one has the luxury to sit out the storm and wait for smoother seas.… Read the rest

Raise a Cup of Kindness

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As we exit another wild, unpredictable year filled with economic, political and environmental upheaval—resulting in changes wrought of inspiration, desperation and perspiration, a virtual salute.

Indeed, as a global community there is much to be lauded, much to be learned and much to be leery from 2011. Cultural revolutions from the Middle East to Wall Street to Main Street; regional economic fissures, that have produced a global network of fiscal fault lines; and a heaping helping of Mother Nature’s wrath have both threatened and united us. It is the same in our industry, where finance, sales and operations teams are increasingly aligning to better recognize, respond and recalibrate to these same global dynamics. We are all learning the lessons of better alignment and agility in our ability to thrive.

Like it or not, VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity), is our “new normal.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of one of my favorite books, The Black Swan, explores the idea that an event—positive or negative—that is deemed improbable, like the appearance of a Black Swan, can cause massive consequences.

I am inspired by what I’ve seen in 2011 from our customers, from our peers and from our Steelwedge team in approaching and resolving their own Black Swans.… Read the rest