For any readers not already aware of our exciting new partnership with the world leading expert on S&OP — Tom Wallace – below is today’s release describing the details.  Tom previously worked with SAP and is very excited about joining forces with Steelwedge to offer the industry’s leading integrated planning solution

Steelwedge and Tom Wallace have entered a Strategic Partnership to provide an integrated solution offering of Education, Training and Software for Executives. As a kick-off for the partnership, Steelwedge is featuring Tom Wallace, in the first of a Webinar series on Executive S&OP Best Practices titled, “Executive S&OP: Surviving the Recession, Preparing for the Upturn.”

The strategic partnership of Steelwedge and Tom Wallace combines two industry leading companies specializing in Executive S&OP. Tom Wallace has a proven track record of helping companies successfully implement Executive S&OP through delivering education, training materials and books, while Steelwedge has built a reputation among customers and industry analyst as the Leading “Pure Play” S&OP software provider.

As partners, Steelwedge will integrate training and education materials developed by Wallace into its standard implementation methodology and Wallace will periodically review and provide input around the Steelwedge product roadmap and direction. Additionally, Steelwedge and Wallace will conduct a Webinar Series on Executive S&OP Best Practices.

The joint webinar series kick-off on March 31, 2009 will help companies and executives who are looking for answers to the question “How can Executive S&OP help me survive the downturn and prepare for the upturn?”. Webinar attendees will benefit from hearing Tom Wallace’s views and lessons learned from his decades of experience as a thought leader in the area of Sales and Operations Planning. In addition, Steelwedge will share how its customers are leveraging its software to survive the…

With each passing day, the news seems to get worse – Chip makers faced a 29% drop in demand in January, PC makers are suffering, Dell continues to cut-back, Spansion files for Chapter 11.  Now what?

What on earth does one do to manage through times that seem to be impossibly difficult?  Where to start?

Our perspective is that the sooner or later the pain will end.  Even for chip makers, there is base demand for the technology that drives global living.  But, how does one predict when the patient will stop bleeding?  When  does the sales forecast inflect?  When does demand finally start matching potential supply – when does one stop cutting?

While it is impossible to predict the future, reducing latency in decision making through effective sales and operations planning (S&OP), creating a truly integrated business planning process by integrating financial planning with S&OP, and updating plans weekly if not daily is an imperative.

In the old work, the idea of listening to field sales and operationalizing that feedback into the integrated planning process was a luxury.  In today’s brave new world, it is mandatory.

Incorporating both qualitative and quantitative inputs into the planning process and carefully evaluating the early warning signals providing by oppotunity tracking and CRM tools such as Salesforce.com (SFDC) is now a survival skill.

Obtaining a wholistic view of the world by connecting historic buying patterns provided by ERP systems such as SAP  with current opportunity feedback provided by Salesforce, evaluating financial plans creating by planning tools such as SAP BPC or Oracle Hyperion with current state S&OP plans is fundamental.  The good news today is that a handful of companies have created software-as-a-service, pay-as-you-go offerings to support these planning processes.

Steelwedge software’s Executive S&OP offering is unique in so much as it enables companies…

Below is a brief excerpt from an article published in today’s Wall Street Journal.

One might ask – how is this relevant to a blog on Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP)?

Not only do lean times beget new, and innovative fashion ideas – but they also beget new and innovative ways to run your business!  Is my sales  organization marching to the same drummer as my operations organization?

Now is the time to think long and hard about tough questions.

Do my planning processes meet the demands of today’s rapidly changing environment?  Are planning decisions based on facts?   Is the information I use to make strategic decisions involving sales promotions, inventory,  sales strategy and operational capacity timely?  Am I looking at and optimizing my decisions based on the “Big Picture” ?  Do I have an efficient system for managing the automation process (such as the purpose-built Executive S&OP solution developed by Steelwedge Software)?  Am I using the valuable information inside my system ecosystem – tracking opportunities inside Salesforce.com,  analyzing demand patterns using data from SAP BW, APO and ERP, or benchmarking my operational plans against my financial goals created using SAP BPC, Oracle  Hyperion, etc

There are many more questions to ask during these challenging times.

Now is the perfect time to innovate and to make difficult but lasting changes.  Institute disciplined S&OP processes, automate slow,  labor-intensive, manual processes, and improving your decision making process!

Lean Times Beget Fresh Fashion Ideas

By CHRISTINA BINKLEY, Wall Street Journal

Judging from the styles on display at fashion week, a recession does wonders for creativity.

There’s been an outpouring of artistry and ingenuity…

Last year, 100% of Steelwedge Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) solutions were delivered on a “SaaS” (Software-as-a-Service or OnDemand) basis – in other words, they were delivered “in the cloud.”   Our partners and prospects frequently ask us why?   The simple response is that it is what our customers asked.   However, the broader question is why is this happening?   The strategic answer is that the nature of  computing is going through a sea change  and that change is being accelerated by the current economic crisis.

But first, what is cloud computing?  It is a world where applications and data are hosted in a “cloud” consisting of thousands of computers are linked together and a ccessible via the Internet.  With cloud computing,  all activities are performed via th internet rather than being based on your desktop or inside a corporate network.

How does cloud computing change the way people work?  For one,  people are no  longer tied to their office or to a single computer.  Work can be taken anywhere and team members can easily collaborate on plans and forecasts.

Why?  Cloud computing offers a revenue and service model that enables companies to survive today’s challenging times – on one hand the huge upfront capital costs associated with the kind of traditional enterprise computing solutions offered by SAP and  Oracle are eliminated.  On the other, the need for costly, large dedicated IT organizationns with specialized knowledged are also eliminated.

Further,  cloud solutions lend themselves to easy collaboration with partners and customers outside of corporate firewalls and ensure that software upgrades and updates are seamlessly applied with minimal disruption.  In short,  cloud computing offers customers a compelling, accessible, flexible, pay-as-you-go, and extremely cost-effective solution for automating cumbersome, manual excel-based integrated business planning and sales and operations planning processes.