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. I’ve seen 100-year-old businesses face recession-driven loss in demand, and realign to come out tighter, stronger and better; I’ve seen consumer electronics powerhouses stare down the reality of ever-shortening product lifecycles with laser-focus on smart new product development; I’ve seen a Phoenix rise from the ashes of the automotive industry through powerful focus and improved management; I’ve seen manufacturers rebound after losing a supplier of 90% of a core part in the devastating tsunami; and I’ve seen hard choices made clearer, and sooner with better empirical data.

So, though we may not know the next Black Swan coming just around the corner in 2012, I raise a cup of kindness to what we’ve seen, what we’ve done and who we’ve met that have changed us for the better in 2011.

We too have paddled in the stream,
from morning sun till dine;
But seas between us broad have roared
since auld lang syne.
And there’s a hand my trusty friend!
And give us a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll take a right good-will draught,
for auld lang syne.

Register for the webinar here!

Just as the Sales and Operations Planning practice has evolved dramatically over the past decade, so have the global market dynamics and complexities. In global business, volatility is the “new normal.” So, how do S&OP leaders adapt to that volatility and still make the best executive-level decisions that balance supply and demand, and integrate operational and financial plans?

This month’s webinar presenter, noted writer and educator Tom Wallace, asked just that question to some of the world’s best practitioners. He has collected their stories of taking planning to the next level –beyond the basics– to deliver Executive S&OP that runs the business with one set of numbers for better agility, performance and profit against a backdrop of global economic, political and environmental turmoil.

‘Taking S&OP to the Next Level’ is scheduled for Wednesday, November 30 at 10:00 a.m PST. Here, Tom will share case studies from experts who’ve used Executive S&OP to:

• support the merger of two businesses into one high-performance business unit
• serve as the basis for earnings calls to Wall Street
• help create a new business
• optimize global production plans and profits and
• make cash flow projections 18 months into the future based on operational demand and supply plans.

Tom will talk more about his belief that Executive S&OP is quite simple in its structure and logic. But in practice, he sees that this often misleads companies into assuming that the process is simple to implement, while nothing could be farther from the truth.

Following Tom’s presentation, Nari Viswanathan, Steelwedge’s Vice President of Product Marketing will use industry examples to outline the additional value of deploying Collaborative S&OP Platform technology.

Finally, get answers to all of your questions with an interactive Q&A session with Nari and Tom. Find out the process, organization and cultural challenges for achieving Best-in-Class Executive S&OP. Feel free to click here to send your questions in advance.

Roger Nessier comes to Steelwedge from Symphony Services where he was a founding executive and Vice President of Products and Services.  He grew Symphony from 80 to 4000+ people over eight years and has worked with over 300 software companies to deliver outsourced development, support, services and process consulting.  At i2 Technologies where he served as the Vice President of Development, he managed 150 team members in India, Canada and US, developing and deploying order management, marketplace and content solutions.

Roger is passionate about sports, especially snow skiing and bicycling. He has a strong interest in learning about other cultures and is an active member in a Vietnamese Cycling Club. He takes great pleasure in accomplishing feats such as bicycling from San Jose to the top of Mt Diablo and back. He often rides as much as 70 miles in a single day on weekends. Roger and his wife have been married for 19 years and live in San Jose.

Q. Why did you choose to join Steelwedge?

A. It is important for me to feel engaged and excited about the value my company provides for our customers, but also feel that I am doing something socially and environmentally responsible.  The Steelwedge solution appears simple in its approach, but the results it achieves for our customers are game changing.  I can’t say that about many trendy software products on the market.  Steelwedge’s solution is one of the rare software solutions that is able to satisfy both the capitalist and the environmentalist in me.  Working at Steelwedge I feel I am doing great things by reducing waste and fuel costs, but at the same time improving the bottom line for our customers!

Q. What best practices does Steelwedge employ to effectively and efficiently undertake customer adoption?

A. User adoption is a top priority for me and my Steelwedge colleagues, because our business is growing by word of mouth, and high adoption translates into great customer satisfaction.  We ensure high user adoption by carefully reviewing current business processes and ensuring that leveraging Steelwedge becomes a natural amplifier and extension of current processes. We also heavily emphasize leveraging customer super user evangelists to help spread the value Steelwedge provides so users are led to Steelwedge, not forced to use it.  Lastly, we ensure that the user experience is impeccable by making sure our solutions are always available, reliable and intuitive.

Q. What new process do you hope to employ to empower the Steelwedge Solutions team?

A. Our company has doubled in size over the past year, and with that growth we need to continue to ensure we are paying attention to the needs of our employees and satisfying their career objectives, so they can continue to drive high levels of customer satisfaction. Happy employees deliver happy customers.  As a smaller company, it was easy to give employees personalized attention without much thought to the processes for doing that, but as our company grows it is necessary to ensure we have formalized reward programs.  I am working with our HR organization to ensure we have frequent and material recognition of our exemplary team members.

Q.  What immediate changes (if any) will you apply to make the Steelwedge Support process stronger and more efficient?

A. My support team members have heard me say this often:  The journey is as important as the destination.  Our team members are very good at developing extremely creative solutions to difficult problems, but are sometimes remiss in frequently communicating progress.  I believe in over communication and giving updates even when there is no update.  I also believe that our customers appreciate it when we can develop a solution with minimal overhead to our customers, i.e. we quickly ascertain the challenge, investigate an approach and come back with a solution without our customer having to spend a lot of time explaining their issue.

Q. What steps will you take under your leadership to improve collaboration between solutions, implementation, development and support teams?

A. We are instituting an engineer rotation program to ensure our engineers are exposed, educated and empathetic to the challenges of other engineering departments.  For example, we are putting engineers that typically conduct support on engineering projects and have implementation engineers work to solve tricky challenges in support.  The benefits of this program are great for Steelwedge and great for our employees that are looking for a more varied work experience vs. what you get in the siloed departments of large companies.  It’s even better for our clients, who can be sure that all of Steelwedge is working as a team to solve any problems and come up with creative solutions.

Q. What are your thoughts on the work culture at Steelwedge?

A. I am very impressed with the teamwork here at Steelwedge and the willingness of various teams from different departments to work through a challenge to ensure that challenges are overcome and resolved. I am particularly impressed with the caliber of everyone comprising the Steelwedge family. There’s a lot to learn with this organization and plenty of opportunity for interesting interaction with many intelligent people.  I joined Steelwedge at an interesting period of its growth and I am glad to take part in the next phase of growth.

Functional groups have unique goals and performance indicators. Sales may be driven to achieve high revenue targets while the Operations group may focus on minimizing labor costs and inventory levels. Finance seeks to manage cash flow, minimize costs and maximize profit. Units of measure may differ from one functional group to the next. Some plan in units, others in dollars. Forecast horizons can vary from current quarter to planning horizon to fiscal multiple year projections.

The key point here is NOT that all groups and individuals should share the same focus and effort. To the contrary, best practice enterprises heavily leverage the unique talents of their employees. Sales sells and Operations drives the supply chain. That said, it is critical that the enterprise has a single, consensus plan that is feasible and all parties agree to execute against that plan. Companies that fail to achieve one agreed plan, are prone to falling well short of optimal inventory levels, customer service targets, availability of desired inventory and company financial goals. A less tangible, but very important by-product of a missing consensus plan is a culture that pits individuals and groups against one another rather than acting as a cohesive team.

From my work at Steelwedge with several clients, it’s been very pleasing to see how the Steelwedge tool promotes cross-functional interaction. Users exchange quantitative and qualitative inputs in an environment that pulls together information in a way that had not previously been available. Beyond data visibility, users are gathering field input, validating assumptions and driving an enterprise plan rather than multiple, isolated departmental plans.

At the end of the day, solutions depend on people, process and technology. If the process and the technology facilitate collaboration, the people become more productive…and happier, too!

Unexpected events can have a profound impact supply chains.  Take the BP gulf oil spill.  Nobody could have predicted this event, the length of time needed to stop the flow of oil or the impact on surrounding communities.  A disaster which continues to impact many thousands of lives.

A major US industrial goods company supplies a wide variety of products to meet numerous industrial needs.  I spoke with an executive at the company about the oil spill.  He said, “We supply hundreds of cleaning products.  None exemplifies the supply chain challenge more than chicken boots.”  “Chicken boots?”, I asked.  He replied, “chicken boots are the name we use to describe knee-high, yellow rubber boots.  For the gulf oil spill, the clean-up workers are provided chicken boots and rags.  They mop up the oil and at the end of the day, dispose of the chicken boots.  The next day, they do it again with new chicken boots.”  The demand for chicken boots went stratospheric. 

The immediate challenge was to make more boots.  Many more boots.  Overtime, raw material expedites, whatever necessary.  But one must ask, is that all we can do?  Are we relegated to simply reacting to life’s unexpected challenges?

Forecasters address such challenges by looking at many variables to make the most accurate future predictions.  Did they predict the need for chicken boots?  No way.  Missed it by a mile.  Why?  Because there was nothing in the past that would have suggested that an oil spill of this magnitude could persist for such a protracted period.

Is there something else we can do?

 
Sales and Operations Planning affords us an ability to look beyond forecasts.  A well-designed, effective S&OP process enables participants to view scenarios in advance and plot various courses of action.  S&OP creates an efficient collaborative environment for quickly maneuvering to meet changing business needs and opportunities.  Are raw material suppliers up to meeting the added demand?  How much can they expand supply before we need to introduce additional supply sources?  How much manufacturing capacity can we add in the short or long term?  What other resources may be impacted by a sudden demand shift?

Scenario and contingency planning enables a better ability to react quickly.  You never know what global event may impact the demand for your products.  Be prepared.  Do your homework.  Use S&OP to align functional areas, model scenarios and drive strategic decisions.

Functional groups have unique goals and performance indicators.  Sales may be driven to achieve high revenue targets while the Operations group may focus on minimizing labor costs and inventory levels.  Finance seeks to manage cash flow, minimize costs and maximize profit.  Units of measure may differ from one functional group to the next.  Some plan in units, others in dollars.  Forecast horizons can vary from current quarter to planning horizon to fiscal multiple year projections.

The key point here is NOT that all groups and individuals should share the same focus and effort. To the contrary, best practice enterprises heavily leverage the unique talents of their employees. Sales sells and Operations drives the supply chain. That said, it is critical that the enterprise has a single, consensus plan that is feasible and all parties agree to execute against that plan. Companies that fail to achieve one agreed plan, are prone to falling well short of optimal inventory levels, customer service targets, availability of desired inventory and company financial goals. A less tangible, but very important by-product of a missing consensus plan is a culture that pits individuals and groups against one another rather than acting as a cohesive team.

From my work at Steelwedge with several clients, it’s been very pleasing to see how the Steelwedge tool promotes cross-functional interaction. Users exchange quantitative and qualitative inputs in an environment that pulls together information in a way that had not previously been available. Beyond data visibility, users are gathering field input, validating assumptions and driving an enterprise plan rather than multiple, isolated departmental plans.

At the end of the day, solutions depend on people, process and technology. If the process and the technology facilitate collaboration, the people become more productive…and happier, too!