In today’s world, the only certainties are information overload, rapid change and global integration. Corporate executives and planners are tasked with making key decisions in a world that involves far less predictability than ever before. The key to improving strategic decision making and planning processes requires vastly improved integration of organizations, functions, and information. No longer can silo-based planning processes co-exist. Finance, Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Operations and other divisions need to work together.
How is this achieved? Integrated business planning (IBP) provides the answer. By engaging all functions, pulling together disparate sources of information, and creating a trully collaborative planning and forecasting process, enormous progress can be made. Steelwedge offers a unique and effective approach to this problem. By integrating SAP FPM (Financial Performance Management) with SAP APO Supply Chain Management (SCM), Salesforce.com CRM information, and other tools, Steelwedge is able to drive a truly unified, “one number forecast” that engages organizations and builds consensus.
Steelwedge is realizing this powerful vision today by working closely with its customers as well as with SAP and other partners. What are your thoughts?
Many of our customers initially approach us seeking advice on creating functional S&OP (Sales and Operations Planning) processes. Their questions relate to organizational and procedural issues and often do not involve systems or data issues. However, once we delve into the core issues it almost always emerges that a significant portion of the process challenges relate to the inability to collect and collate data. In the absence of sound data, S&OP planning quickly moves from the realm of fact-based decision making to speculation and guesswork.
We often see S&OP sessions devolve into subjective, opinion-based speculation over what the right response or answer should be. In today’s data-rich world S&OP business decisions need to be on facts. Collaborative forecasts processes and systems need to be in place to deliver timely market feedback. Steelwedge-type “slice and dice” views of the data and changes to the plan need to be accomodated quickly in order to provide executives with strategic feedback. Supply plans and scenarios need to be evaluated in light of profitability and practicality. Executive teams need to understand the financial implications of supply-demand tradeoffs. Decisions need to be made collaboratively yet quickly and on the basis of facts.
It is for this reason that S&OP systems such as Steelwedge have moved to the forefront. Leaders need to make valid decisions based on transparent, fact-based decision processes. Management needs to be able to quickly identify and react to issues. Changes need to be understood and accomodated. Supply plans must be balanced against evolving demand plans.
S&OP can no longer be just a stand-alone process – systems delivering rock-solid planning information must exist as a backbone and organizations must be engaged.
Steelwedge Software today announced a new product release for its Sales Planning & Performance Management (SPPM) solution featuring One-Click-Planning” TM. One-Click Planning features a new Steelwedge Planning Work Center that provides users visibility to critical planning, transaction and performance management data required to execute the S&OP process.
One Click Planning enables global enterprises to achieve maximum financial and operational performance from their S&OP process by providing executives and users the ability to go directly from an email alert to value-added planning and exception resolution. “One-Click-Planning enables Steelwedge to build on its leadership position in the S&OP marketplace”, said Steelwedge VP, Product Management Chris Givens. “Based on our strong track record in helping enterprises enable collaborative sales forecasting and bridging the gaps between sales and operations, our customer feedback was a key driver for us to enhance our existing workflow and adding the new work center, to be more streamlined, user friendly and configurable.” “Existing Steelwedge customers and prospects are extremely excited about the new release because it will have a significant impact on their S&OP processes and financial and operational performance”, said Steelwedge CEO Glen Margolis.
“While our current Steelwedge solution is critical to enabling the collaborative sales forecasting and operations planning process, we are pleased with Steelwedge “One-Click Planning”, which further streamlines our planning efforts, providing quick access to the information we need to make faster decisions that impact the bottom line,” said the COO of a leading high technology manufacturer and Steelwedge customer. One of the long standing challenges of S&OP is to provide an automated workflow driven solution that engages executives and planners across multiple functions to update plans on a scheduled and exception basis.…
I just returned from a ten day whirlwind tour of Europe during which time I met with sales prospects and partners in England, Sweden, Germany and France. One message resonated loud and clear – European companies still tend to operate on a country-specific basis. Systems are disparate, processes are inconsistent, and collaboration on forecasts and plans is limited. However, competitive and regulatory pressures are forcing companies to integrate processes, consolidate planning and improve forecasting.
Today this process is largely done in spreadsheets. However, all parties agree that sales and operations (S&OP) roll-ups, plan consolidation, and forecast collaboration require immense amounts of manual work. Dozens of different perspectives and users exist not to mention disparate ways of being organized across countries. When shown the Steelwedge way – co-option of existing spreadsheets through the adoption of Steelwedge Enterprise Enabled Excel spreadsheets, European managers become extremely excited. For the first time they see a solution that meets security requirements, that can eliminate months of latency in demand signals, can allow improved inventory practices, and better bottom-line forecasting. Not only that, but a solution that is extremely configurable, flexible, and cost-effective.
The Europeans are investing – how long will it take for our European user-base to surpass our US user-base?
