Much ado has been made of the recent moves by ERP vendors Oracle and SAP to acquire their way into the SaaS space.  It is indeed high time that the big ERP players  embrace cloud computing.  Certainly, the value of cloud-based Software-as-a-Service has not been lost on next generation software and solutions players—nor, more importantly—on its users at global businesses of all sizes.

Further,  businesses haven’t limited their SaaS investments just to sales and human capital management like the recent acquisition examples of RightNow  and SuccessFactors.

Ironically, in the supply chain arena, for at least the last five years, it has been the new breed of SaaS player that has actually added more value to the very on-premise systems where Oracle and SAP dominate.

Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) which informs better supply chain agility, is all about bringing together the planning process across demand and supply organizations for a single view of the truth to make better business decisions.  While the process of S&OP has been in place for a few decades, it hasn’t been until the last few years that technology—especially easy to access, implement and configure SaaS-based technology—has enabled companies to unite the disparate ERP, CRM, SCM, BI and Finance systems data to achieve their S&OP priorities. Indeed some of the world’s largest, most complex manufacturers are trusting cloud-based S&OP solutions to help them harmonize their ERP and other rigid, on premise systems and, in turn, become more agile organizations, able to cope with today’s volatile business environment.

Since cloud computing solutions have been delivering better business leverage from ERP systems, it is time that ERP vendors give cloud computing the credit it deserves and has rightly earned.

As Tiger Woods slowly recedes from visibility in today’s fast paced, polyphonic, multi-media environment, I am driven to identify some sort of meaning in it all.   And, in a world in which bits, bytes and terabytes of data stream before us daily this is no easy task.  Living in an age when global conflict shares a table with global social networking, creating personal connections has become the Holy Grail.  On occasion connections do occur.  When this happens the information that fog my life temporarily lifts.  So, ending a long day immersed in Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP),  I ponder — do S&OP, Tiger Woods and Elephants share something in common?

At its best, a highly collaborative, data-driven Sales and Operations Planning process creates visibility.  The consequences of bad choice become clear.  And, elephants sitting in the room – or perhaps obsolescent inventory lying in a warehouse – cannot be avoided.  In good S&OP scenarios are created, alternatives examined, and the path forward is understood.  Often, the process of S&OP itself surfaces important issues that might otherwise have been missed.  Were there early indications of bad choice in Tiger Wood’s behavior?  Was his life story of discipline and perfection to good to be true?  Was there an elephant in the room all along that we were all ignoring?

We all love a hero.  And of course, we seek to avoid unpleasant experience.  While the world worshipped Tiger, Tiger was spending his energy struggling to contain a boiling maelstrom of problems. There indeed was an elephant in Tiger’s room and neither he nor the rest of the world was willing to confront this painful fact until the elephant crashed through the house.  The good news is that life will go on for the rest of us and Tiger will survive the storm.…

Anyone following the news is aware of the now steady drumbeat (finally!) of good news on the economic front.  Exports are up, Europe is doing better, home sales are up, and, of course, the stock market is up.  But wait, what follows next?  Oil prices are up.  Soon, commodities prices will start rising.  Then transportation costs will rise.

So what does this mean for manufacturers and how  does it relate to Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP)??  Clearly, after many quarters of focus on efficient operations and lean inventory management, the focus will once again shift to managing supply chain costs.  Transportation costs, materials costs, and eventually labor costs will eventually rise to prominence.

Are you prepared?

Effective planning is essential.  How will your operations change if there is another oil spike?  What will you do if a port is closed down by a strike?  How do transportation economics impact lead times?  These are just a few of the questions that must be understood by planners.

Ensuring that your S&OP Plan incorporates scenarios that mitigate these concerns is fast becoming essential.  Ensuring that your team is aware and focused is even more essential.  Today’s S&OP solutions such as Compass Express by Steelwedge offer the perfect antidote for these kind of challenges.

Effective Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) measurably improves margins. However, historically, S&OP relied on backward-facing shipment data, subjective opinion, and incomplete operational data.  It was overly complex, costly, time-consuming, unreliable and inaccurate.

Now, technology-enabled S&OP processes drive a practical S&OP process, systematically integrating people, processes and data, and restoring confidence in the forecasting and planning processes. Effective technology-enabled S&OP guides participants through a workflow-driven, collaborative process, resulting in a highly accurate aligned forecast and plan that all functions and trading partners can trust. With solutions such as Steelwedge Compass Express S&OP planners can quickly adapt resources to changing conditions, significantly increase margins and dramatically improve revenue predictability. The key is the adoption of a flexible, easy to use, collaborative, and comprehensive solution.

Improve Revenue Visibility

Two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies have no formal way of aligning supply and demand based on corporate-wide inputs. Unscientific approaches result in poor focus of organizational resources like capacity, manufacturing, staffing, sales efforts, finance and budgets. The overall Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) process suffers in turn. Creating true revenue visibility not only requires strong analytic support, but also the automation of systematic and automated processes for soliciting feedback and creating agreement among multiple parties

Create a Profitable S&OP Plan

Steelwedge empowers executives to evaluate alternate pricing scenarios, product mixes, and configurations. Once the optimum margin forecast scenario has been identified, promotions, product packaging and configuration, and customer targeting decisions can be even further tuned to drive the most profitable demand plan possible. Through participative processes, sales, operations, marketing, and finance are able to work in unison toward a common goal of selling and delivering the most profitable mix of products. The result is enhanced corporate earnings and more efficient…