Lisa has over twenty years of executive experience scaling services organizations for supply chain software companies.  Previously, Lisa ran the global services organization for ModelN, Navis, Savi, and Extricity.  Lisa has also worked as a Senior Production & Materials Planner and as a Senior Manufacturing Engineer at Harris RF Communications where she helped drive their Sale and Operations Planning process. Lisa holds an MBA in Supply Chain Management from the Rochester Institute of Technology (where she completed her Master’s Thesis on “Demand Planning”) and a Bachelor’s Degree in Manufacturing Engineering.  She and her husband reside in the hills above Silicon Valley where she serves as a volunteer Firefighter and Emergency Medic.

Q. Why did you choose to join Steelwedge?

Lisa: Supply chain, S&OP and IBP run through my blood and have been in my DNA for 30 years.  Both my Bachelors degree (Industrial/Manufacturing Engineering with minor in Operations Research) and Masters thesis were all around Demand Planning and Demand and Supply matching.  The first 10 years of my career were in manufacturing playing all types of roles that are significantly impacted by how well a company understands and executes integrated business planning.  I have personally experienced poor planning as both a vendor and supplier and wanted to join Steelwedge, the leader in the market, in order to help solve this critical global issue.

Q.  What business problems are customers solving everyday with the help of Steelwedge’s process consulting and technology?

Lisa: Our services and products are helping customers on many fronts.  We offer business process definition and IBP roadmap planning sessions for newcomers to S&OP to help them plan and execute a people, process and technology roadmap that fits their business needs and challenges. We offer change management and extensive training options to help users of all levels understand the benefits of S&OP and how they fit into the journey and how important the movement is for their company and them personally. Our product suite is the icing on the cake that automates process, ensures data and decision security, provides real life scenarios and detailed analysis. Simply put, we provide timely and accurate information to make excellent decisions for the entire supply chain related to a company.

Q.  You’ve focused on building a team comprised of consultants with real-world S&OP and IBP expertise.  Why is this an important benefit for our customers?

Lisa: Our customers demand experience and excellence from every single services and support team member.  Our goal must be to be one step ahead of our customers and partners and show them the way to mastering IBP. One step ahead means that we all understand S&OP and IBP and that we are keenly aware of all of the best practices already offered within Steelwedge’s products so we can keep the process, technology and change simple, yet extremely effective.  If we can look, act, and speak the role of any customer user, we can lead them successfully through the journey of S&OP and IBP leadership.

Q.  What steps has the Services team taken under your leadership to help Steelwedge customers realize faster time to value and greater ROI?

Lisa: Over the past year we have been focusing on simple and effective solutions with a crawl, walk, run project rollout methodology.  We also now deliver with an iterative approach to get our solution and benefits in front of users as soon as possible. This allows for customers to understand the vision of S&OP, get some momentum and excitement built up with process and solutions definition and see the benefits early on with specific functions and/or business units. We also have solution design and project reviews as part of our standard operations that enable us to stay on track and get expected value to our customers as soon as possible.

Q.  Steelwedge recently announced the launch of the Service Delivery Platform (SDP), what benefits can Steelwedge customers expect to realize from this new technology?

Lisa: Our customers and partners are very excited about the concept and first delivery of SDP this past August.  SDP will allow and enable certified members to be able to perform changes and own project work that is currently only handled by our services and support team.  By enabling customers and partners to be more self sufficient and creative with our product and its valuable reports, scenarios and dashboards, we can focus on providing critical strategic services, being our customer’s trusted advisor on S&OP and IBP and focusing on how we can be the robust but low cost solution for all industries for S&OP.

Along these lines, some of our folks have posted thought-provoking discussions with Lora Cecere, a partner with Altimeter Group, and Blake Johnson, a Stanford University professor, on our website. These are short videos in a series – you only have to listen to what you need to know right now. You can always come back for other topics. Yes, we’re going to ask you to register once, but after that it’s a free ride.  In the series’ first installment, Lora Cecere discusses the business challenges that are driving S&OP adoption. You’ll learn why Lora has concluded that companies with strong S&OP processes and tools are flourishing in today’s economy, and in fact, are able to sense changes in demand five times faster than their competitors. Lora is a partner with Altimeter Group and is known as a supply chain visionary who understands technology. She brings seven years of industry analyst expertise coupled with two decades of manufacturing, marketing and software expertise. She knows her stuff!

In the series’ second installment, Blake Johnson, Ph.D. explains how leading companies are incorporating demand and supply uncertainty into their S&OP process to overcome the challenge of demand volatility. You’ll learn why Blake encourages leading companies to forecast a range of potential demand so that managers can confidently evaluate trade-offs to achieve the optimal level of supply chain flexibility. A consulting professor at Stanford University, Blake is an internationally recognized expert in the field of supply chain risk and flexibility.

These are the first videos in our S&OP Master Class series. We hope you’ll find them helpful and informative. We’re doing our best to get information out there, but if there’s something specific that you need, let us know and we’ll see what we can do!

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Chris Chiappinelli, a blogger associated with the Managing Automation Blog offers the following :

“Just in Time, in its purest form, is a thing of beauty. Read Toyota’s description of it on their website — it sounds like poetry in motion. But the marketplace doesn’t care for poetry. We don’t want to place our order and watch the gears — perfectly meshed though they may be — smoothly churn out our product. We want our hamburgers pre-cooked and waiting for us under a heat lamp. In that world, Just-in-Time has no place. It’s a museum piece, a relic of a more patient era. In this world of pre-heated hamburgers and mass customization, Toyota and its counterparts are forced to produce not to actual demand, but to expected demand. And that, my friends, not only belies JIT; it creates a huge amount of risk.”

“A New York Times article illustrates just how far from its roots Toyota strayed:Previously, plants operated under the sales force’s direction of “you make them, we will sell them,” said Real C. Tanguay, president of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada. Now the philosophy is, “if we can sell them, then you will make them,” he said.”  “Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Who would have predicted that a Toyota executive would ever sum up the company’s philosophy as, “You make them, we will sell them”?”

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Steelwedge enables customers to better understand and anticipate demand through forecasting, collaborative engagement of field sales, and analysis of changes in sales pipeline opportunities.  In today’s world, these are vital processes.

The new offering makes it possible for companies to accomplish the goal of balancing supply with demand, collaborating on plans, and establishing executive S&OP plans with an ease never before possible.