SAP
Tiger Woods, S&OP and Elephants
As Tiger Woods s
lowly 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.
However, in today’s troubled economy, corporate executives cannot afford to ignore the elephant’s in the room. There is no room for bad choice. Constant vigilance and decisive action are imperative. Sales and Operations Planning is a process that can elucidate the elephant in the room. Moreover, Steelwedge S&OP drives better decision making and good choice. Did a major customer in a remote region of the world just cancel a major order? If so, how should we react? Should we discount aging inventory before promoting new products? Can we improve profitability with a different price structure? The answer to these questions is the fuel that powers successful corporate governance. And, indeed the story of Tiger Woods, Elephants and S&OP provides an important message.
Steelwedge Software, Inc. Named to Software Magazine’s 27th Annual Software 500
Steelwedge Software Inc., the leading provider of software-as-a-service Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) solutions, today announced that it was named one of the top 500 software companies. This year’s inclusion in the Software 500 marks the third straight year Steelwedge Software, Inc. has been ranked.
“The 2009 Software 500 results show that revenue growth in the software and services industry was healthy, with total Software 500 revenue of $491.3 billion worldwide for 2008 representing 8.8 percent growth from the previous year,” said John P. Desmond, editor of Software Magazine and Softwaremag.com.
“The Software 500 helps CIOs, senior IT managers and IT staff research and create the short list of business partners,” Desmond says. “It is a quick reference of vendor viability. And the online version to be posted soon at www.Softwaremag.com is searchable by category, making it what we call the online catalog to enterprise software.”
“Our continued growth is further validation that our customers experience substantial business benefits from the Steelwedge S&OP solution,” said Glen Margolis, CEO and founder of Steelwedge Software, Inc. “We will continue to innovate and provide our customers with the Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) solutions they need to increase their revenue and competitive advantage.”
The Software 500 is a revenue-based ranking of the world’s largest software and services suppliers targeting medium to large enterprises, their IT professionals, software developers and business managers involved in software and services purchasing.
The ranking is based on total worldwide software and services revenue. This includes revenue from software licenses, maintenance and support, training and software-related services and consulting. The financial information was gathered by a survey prepared by King Content Co. and posted at www.Softwaremag.com, as well as from public documents.
Sphere: Related ContentFormer SAP Executive Joins Leading S&OP Solutions Provider Steelwedge Software
Former SAP Executive Michael Kramer has joined Steelwedge Software, Inc. as SVP of Sales and Marketing. Kramer joins Steelwedge at a time of extremely rapid growth. He will be responsible for scaling the Steelwedge sales and marketing organizations and ensuring that Steelwedge maintains its leadership role as the “dominant best-of-breed Sales and Operations (S&OP) vendor.” (AMR Research).
In his role at SAP, Kramer was responsible for increasing revenue by over ten times within his region and closing major deals at companies such as Starbucks, McKesson, T-Mobile, Clorox, Coors, and Adidas. Kramer also served as Director of Sales at Yantra where he increased sales by four fold in four years and helped drive Yantra’s highly successful acquisition by AT&T Sterling Commerce. Kramer was also the VP of Sales at Accruent and Amitive where his teams doubled sales during his employment.
“Sales and Operations Planning is the most strategic process a company has.” said Michael Kramer, “At its core, SAP is a transactional and BI system and does not offer a practical S&OP solution. Steelwedge is the only vendor that offers a cloud-based S&OP solution that truly addresses the needs of SAP customers while offering seamless integration into SAP.”
“We are extremely pleased with the progress Steelwedge is making in rapidly growing revenues and attracting world-class talent” said “Glen Margolis, CEO of Steelwedge Software, Inc. “And, we are very confident that Michael’s leadership will enable us to further cement our position as the dominant S&OP solutions provider.”
Also joining the Steelwedge sales team as VP of Solutions is Ed Lewis. Ed brings over twenty years of experience in manufacturing and is a specialist in Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP). Prior to Steelwedge, Ed was the CEO of a supply chain technology services provider, President of an industrial manufacturing company, and Director of Materials at a high tech manufacturing organization.
Sphere: Related ContentTop Criteria for SAP Customers to Use in Evaluating S&OP Solutions
A question in the minds of many executives in companies running SAP ERP and/or SAP APO is what type of organization would benefit from a Sales and Operations Planning solution (S&OP) solution by a best-of-breed vendor. Below are some guidelines that can help clients decide if they should also evaluate another vendor’s products before making a decision.
Before outlining the criteria, let’s define the scope of the S&OP solution to include demand planning, rough cut capacity planning, performance management, product life cycle planning and business-planning (revenue/margin). With that scope defined, a company with some the following attributes should also evaluate an S&OP solution from a best-of-breed vendor:
• Has the business need to go live with the solution within weeks rather than years.
• Needs the ability to analyze trade-offs and develop alternate planning scenarios to determine the best outcome
• Currently spends an inordinate amount of time compiling and massaging data into a usable format
• Uses a direct sales force and believes that the ability to transform high level, sales opportunities from their CRM system into detailed, unit-based forecasts will significantly improve the quality and relevance of the demand forecast.
• Has a complex product mix or configured products and needs attach rate forecasting capabilities.
• Wants to create a consensus demand plan by incorporating input from other organizational plans such as new product introduction plan, sales pipeline, finance forecast etc and some of that data exists in non SAP systems such as SFA systems, PLM systems and even ERP systems from other vendors in different divisions.
• Is looking for a secure, integrated solution for sales and operations planning across the enterprise.
• Operates in a changing environment and wants the ability to easily update and evolve their S&OP process (a straightforward mechanism for creating and updating business rules, time series, and attributes) as their business processes changes.
• Does most of their planning on Microsoft Excel today and expects adoption issues with planning systems that have web-based user interface rather than an Excel-based interface.
• Wants to extend the solution beyond the firewall to support collaboration with distributors and customers.
• Wants to simplify and streamline their planning process and is looking for a simple-to-use workflow based S&OP process that is driven by E-mail and leverages an Excel “front-end”
Steelwedge is uniquely positioned as the only dedicated Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) provide in the SAP Ecohub partnership ecosystem. With standard connectors and process maps for SAP, Steelwedge meets the urgent need for improved strategic decision making driven by a scalable S&OP process faced by SAP customers large and small face.
Sphere: Related ContentRelease 5.1 with Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) Dashboards
Steelwedge introduces Release 5.1 with Executive Sales and Operations Planning Dashboards Steelwedgecontinues its rapid growth as five new customers select SPPM Release 5.1 — the industry’s leading cloud-based Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) solution.
Youtube Video Link: Steelwedge Sales and Operations Planning release 5.1
Steelwedge Software, the leading innovator in Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) solutions, today announced a new product release for its Cloud-based Sales Planning & Performance Management (SPPM) solution featuring configurable Executive S&OP Dashboards, enhanced best-practice based Executive S&OP workflow capabilities, and expanded scalability.
Steelwedge SPPM Release 5.1 represents a significant milestone in the product’s maturity and development life cycle. The primary focus of Release 5.1 was to further enhance usability, scalability, elevate a business user orientation and extend the supportability of the platform. In particular, enhancements and new capabilities have been developed for Release 5.1 in the following areas: User Interface, Dashboards, Workflow Scheduling, Configuration and Platform.
One of the most visible changes in SPPM Release 5.1 is the new web based Executive S&OP homepage which has evolved into a more powerful business user work center designed to help a user plan, monitor performance and manage by exception. The new homepage includes an intuitive tabbed structure.
Release 5.1 also incorporates a new, best-in-class statistical forecasting engine – the Steelwedge Optimized Forecasting Engine (SOFE), enhanced Excel-based S&OP Templates and powerful customer-level S&OP Master Data management capabilities.
“Steelwedge Release 5.1 enables Steelwedge to further strengthen our leadership position in the S&OP marketplace”, said Steelwedge CEO Glen Margolis, “Existing Steelwedge customers and prospects are extremely excited about the new release because it will have a significant impact on their financial and operational performance.”
“With Release 5.1, Steelwedge has continued to assert its leadership position as the best-in-class S&OP solution – Steelwedge has enabled us to reduce our inventory by over 18%. We are confident that the new release will enable us to even further improve our business operations” said the COO of a leading high technology manufacturer and Steelwedge customer.
As a Certified SAP Partner, the Steelwedge S&OP solution release 5.1 seamlessly integrates into SAP ERP and APO to drive Executive Sales and Operations Planning processes. Recent Steelwedge customers adopting Release 5.1 include General Electric, Intuit, Contech and Hospira.
Sphere: Related ContentOnDemand Sales and Operations Planning in 30 Days for SAP Customers
Steelwedge today announced a new release called “Compass Express S&OP” which offers a highly scalable “out-of-the-box” S&OP solution that can be implemented in less than thirty days. The solution leverages Steelwedge’s award-winning Sales Planning and Performance Management Platform (SPPM) and advanced partnership with SAP. The solution also draws on leading-edge technological developments to usher in a level of ease-of-implementation and ease-of-use never before available.Steelwedge Compass Express S&OP delivers the full range of functionality available in SPPM in a packaged, best practice-based format that expedites implementation, integration and training. Standard functionality includes Executive S&OP, collaborative demand planning, revenue planning, and performance management. The next release of Compass Express will also include direct integration with SAP BusinessObjects Xcelsius and SAP BusinessObjects Explorer for enhanced data analysis, reporting and business intelligence capabilities. Steelwedge Compass Express S&OP also includes standard integration with Salesforce.com (SFDC).
Steelwedge Compass Express was developed in response to growing demand from manufacturing companies in North America, Europe and Asia for an easy, highly cost-effective packaged OnDemand S&OP solution with standard integration into SAP, very low upfront costs, low total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) and a subscription pricing model. “Steelwedge Compass S&OP represents a major milestone for the software industry. Compass Express offers a packaged, OnDemand S&OP solution with standard integration points that enables manufacturing companies to increase planning visibility and improve profitability,” said Glen Margolis, CEO.
Steelwedge Compass Express Release is scheduled for general availability in Q2 of 2009.
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