Today’s post reflects the enthusiasm we have seen from customers who have chosen to solve their sales and operations planning (S&OP) and collaborative sales forecasting challenges using Steelwedge SaaS software. The post below was written by Phil Wainewright of ZDNet
Market researcher IDC has published an upward revision to its market size projections for SaaS in 2009. At a time when most industries and economies around the world are slashing their growth forecasts into single digits or even negative territory, IDC now expects SaaS growth to surge by more than 40 percent in the current year. That’s a significant move up from its previous forecast of 36% growth, published back in July when most economists were still trying to deny the onset of recession.
SaaS’s counter-cyclical boom is entirely due to the enhanced attractions of the model when times are bad, says IDC:
“… the harsh economic climate will actually accelerate the growth prospects for the software as a service (SaaS) model as vendors position offerings as right-sized, zero-CAPEX alternatives to on-premise applications. Buyers will opt for easy-to-use subscription services which meter current use, not future capacity, and vendors and partners will look for new products and recurring revenue streams.”
Don’t you just love that definition of SaaS? “Right-sized, zero-CAPEX alternatives to on-premise.” The report’s author, director of on-demand and SaaS research Robert Mahowald, adds an interesting observation that bears out the uprating:
“… several key vendors finished the year very strong, reporting stable financials and inroads into new customer-sets.”
From my own conversations with privately held SaaS players, I can certainly confirm that business seems to be expanding with continued momentum. Yesterday I was on a call with Phil Fernandez, CEO of marketing automation vendor Marketo, when I heard a bell ring and some cheering…
The following inspirational passage is extracted from an essay by Kathleen Robinson (www.krobinson.com). While it provides general counsel, it is extremely applicable to manufacturing executives scrambling to improve their bottom-line through improved sales forecasting as well as sales and operations planning processes (S&OP).
———————————————-
Without a doubt, we have our work cut out for us this year, but really nothing we haven’t seen before. Doing more with fewer resources, managing change at every level, staying close to our customers, finding new opportunities for business growth and development, and covering rising costs are all familiar refrains. While the intensity of these challenges may be stronger than in the past, I believe we’ve trained for these challenges and know how to face them.
In good times, it’s relatively easy for organizations and individuals to grow and flourish. It’s the tough times that really show us what we’re made of! Like athletes who train every day to build the mindset, muscle, skill and endurance that will support them in facing career defining moments, as successful business professionals we are also ready to face the current challenges with the knowledge and skills that we’ve honed over our careers.
The fundamental business strategy of being customer focused in our business practices and decision making is more important than ever. [ Note: Which is why Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) has moved to the forefront] We all recognize that we’re here to serve our customers and meet their needs. Yet it’s easy to get away from that fundamental principle especially when we’re under pressure to meet short term financial targets. Over time we lose touch with what our customers need and want from us unless we take the time to really listen to them. Our colleague, Linda Sharp, will offer some practical tips for conducting…
Warren Buffet famously said, “You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.” The economic tide is certainly waning these days, and a lot of companies have found their Sales & Operations Planning processes to be completely inadequate in this unprecedented environment.
The past does not equal the future. We cannot drive our car by looking only in the rearview mirror, and we cannot manage our companies by looking only at historical data. Effective real-time collaboration with peers, partners, customers, and suppliers is the only way to provide meaningful demand forecast visibility with enough detail (product mix) and time (planning horizon) to enable the organization to react to rapidly changing conditions.
“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Dwight D Eisenhower
With each passing month’s, more Salesforce.com customers are turning to the Steelwedge Software sales and operations planning (S&OP) solution for easy-to-use, robust and flexible OnDemand (SAAS) based solutions for improving their bottom-line. The unique and synergistic combination of SFDC and Steelwedge provides companies with a truly integrated view of their sales opportunities, sales forecasting, product mix plan, build plan, annual operating plan, revenue, and margin plans.
Only Steelwedge offers the unique and powerful capability to manage complex product configurations, product mix, and new products from inception to end-of-life. When coupled with Saleforce.com’s easy-to-use CRM solution for opportunity management, companies are able to tap into “cloud computing” to achieve a level of cost-effective and powerful business decision capabilities heretofore not imaginable.
