This week, the Wall Street Journal pegged it: Global companies took years building supply chains. In 2011, natural disasters took just days to break them all apart. Like it or not, VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) is the new normal, and more than ever before, time is the new currency.

Here’s what I mean by that: with the rapid outgrowth of linear supply chains into multi-enterprise networks, loss of control and visibility have become the top challenges for many supply chains. Proliferating risks in the demand-supply network and increasing lead-times due to expanding networks makes flexibility the key to overcoming challenges.

This was indeed a hot topic at the latest trade show I attended, Supply Chain Logistics 2011, where the theme was agility and flexibility.  Leaders of supply chain strategies and leading global companies were on hand to discuss, debate and deliver ideas about how they—and the industry at large—can tap different approaches, such as Integrated Business Planning, to ensure they are more agile. It is imperative that they are able to beat the clock and deliver better returns to their companies in a world where VUCA reigns and no one has the luxury to sit out the storm and wait for smoother seas.

Well known risk management expert, Yossi Sheffi of MIT drove a fascinating discussion on resiliency. He used case studies to highlight examples of enterprise resiliency in the face of unexpected “Black Swan” disruptions. Gerry Smith, Global VP of Supply Chain at Lenovo, brought home the message with real-life examples of the challenges Lenovo faced during the Japanese Tsunami and the Thai Floods of 2011.

Think of it this way: you advance your planning process with flexibility; you protect your business with agility. While both flexibility and agility have short-term and long-term results, it is no longer enough to focus primarily on the short-term benefits. There is a limit to the strategies and tactics that companies can adopt in the short term within the lead-time.  To optimize the new time currency, you must be able to look at strategic scenarios and analyze longer term tradeoffs based on the market conditions within the lead-time. This mix of strategic and operational scenario management has become mandatory due to the rising complexity of supply chains.  Sales & Operations Planning provides the ideal balance: an antidote to volatility.

What do you think? Are you capitalizing on time?

Visit the Steelwedge community on LinkedIn to share your views or to discuss the topics in this blog post.

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.

Steelwedge recently announced that we’ve expanded our management team to support rapid growth and ensure a high level of customer satisfaction.  We will be profiling each of our new executives starting today with our Vice President of North American Sales, Pier Barattolo.

Pier comes to Steelwedge from Right90 where he Vice President of Sales and drove rapid customer growth. Prior to Right90, Barattolo was Vice President of North American EPM sales for SAP Business Objects, where he helped grow annual license revenue by 82 percent, and Vice President of Sales at IBM Cognos Adaytum where he drove sales from $1 million to over $64 million.  Pier has also held executive positions at Rolls Royce and General Electric.

Steelwedge: Why did you choose to join Steelwedge?

Barattolo: I was impressed with Steelwedge’s market leadership and deep S&OP and business planning expertise.  The Integrated Business Planning (IBP) and sales and operations planning (S&OP) technology space is exploding as companies continue to focus intently on perfecting their demand-supply planning in response to recessionary pressures.  The opportunity to help Steelwedge quickly scale its sales organization to meet market demand presented an exciting challenge.

Steelwedge: What is driving the adoption of IBP and S&OP technology?

Barattolo: As I talk to business leaders across the country, it is evident that the recent economic turmoil exposed the unfortunate fact that many companies lack the processes and technology to cope with unexpected events — whether good or bad.  The lack of an integrated operational and financial planning approach meant that executives lacked an early warning system and could not adjust quickly to changing circumstances.  The financial, operational and customer satisfaction implications of this shortfall have been huge.  Now, as companies are forced to do more with less, they must become more efficient and effective in managing their limited resources to take advantage of any market opportunity.  IBP is fast becoming the tool of choice to help solve this problem.

Steelwedge: Why are companies looking to leverage the cloud?

Barattolo: Faster time to value, a lower total cost of ownership, and the ability to do more with fewer internal resources are the biggest factors driving companies to embrace cloud computing.  In our fast-changing environment, companies can no longer waste time and money with lengthy ERP-type deployments.  Expectations around time to value have increased dramatically and the dearth of internal IT resources means that the cloud is often the best and most realistic option.  Also, the pay-as-you-go model that characterizes cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings compels the vendor to drive value through the application day-in and day-out – not just before the sale.

Steelwedge: What should companies consider when evaluating S&OP solutions?

Barattolo: Given the highly collaborative and complex nature of the S&OP process, companies should partner with a technology vendor that brings deep domain expertise and knowledge of best practices.  It is the right balance of people, process and technology that ultimately will make the S&OP process successful in an organization.  From a technology standpoint, companies should distinguish between a purpose-built solution versus one that is stitched together — as this would clearly impact time to value, overall complexity, project risk and total cost of ownership.  When companies scratch below the label all will be revealed.  Companies also have to rate user adoption high on their criteria list as end users will naturally prefer a solution that leverages a familiar and intuitive UI.

It was important to find an equity partner that could help us beyond simply providing capital.  Jason Payne and his Mainsail team have a strong track record helping “boot strapped” companies evolve into world-class companies.  They have a wealth of operational expertise working with next generation software providers and bring to bear an extensive network of technology professionals.

This investment will help us to facilitate global sales growth and ensure seamless support to our current portfolio of global customers. Our customers will have access to the leading edge technology, including an enhanced IBP platform. I’m especially pleased that Mainsail’s strategic vision complements our long-time goal of building best-in-class solutions that exceed the expectations of our customers.

Read the press release here: http://www.steelwedge.com/news/details.php?relid=109