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.

During the past year,  all of the major analyst firms have started tracking Sales and Operations Planning  (S&OP) closely.  Why is this the case?  After years of being viewed as one of many important processes adopted by best-in-class CPG companies, companies in all sectors of the economy are now realizing that effective balancing of supply and demand mst be done at a strategic as well as a detailed level.  Moreover, the maturation of the data and infrastructure available to execute S&OP now makes it possible for companies to achieve this important goal.

Moreover, the current economic crisis is forcing companies to manage demand against supply much more tightly and effectively than ever before.   The net result is a burgeoning market for consulting and software firms tapping into this demand.   While only a handful of companies such as Steelwedge Software are truly dedicated to supporting this vital, strategic process, many other companies – mostly in the supply chain space – have jumped on the bandwagon and are now offering solutions and services in this area.

So what is the analysts view?  The answer is surprisingly divergent.  While some analysts see S&OP as a generic term for a monthly executive supply-demand review process, others look at it in  a more nuanced way.  Some analysts have dissected it by industry whereas others view it as function of organizational maturity.

In any case, we are extremely glad to see that the world is finally elevating S&OP to the level it deserves as the driving strategic process that integrates executive  management and corporate strategy with operational tactics.

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.

Many of our customers initially approach us seeking advice on creating functional S&OP (Sales and Operations Planning) processes.   Their questions relate to organizational and procedural issues and often do not involve systems or data issues.  However, once we delve into the core issues it almost always emerges that a significant portion of the process challenges relate to the inability to collect and collate data.   In the absence of sound data, S&OP planning quickly moves from the realm of fact-based decision making to speculation and guesswork.

We often see S&OP sessions devolve into subjective, opinion-based speculation over what the right response or answer should be.  In today’s data-rich world S&OP business decisions need to be on facts.  Collaborative forecasts processes and systems need to be in place to deliver timely market feedback.  Steelwedge-type “slice and dice” views of the data and changes to the plan need to be accomodated quickly in order to provide executives with strategic feedback.    Supply plans and scenarios need to be evaluated in light of profitability and practicality.   Executive teams need to understand the financial implications of supply-demand tradeoffs.  Decisions need to be made collaboratively yet quickly and on the basis of facts.

It is for this reason that S&OP systems such as Steelwedge have moved to the forefront.  Leaders need to make valid decisions based on transparent, fact-based decision processes.  Management needs to be able to quickly identify and react to issues.  Changes need to be understood and accomodated.  Supply plans must be balanced against evolving demand plans.

S&OP can no longer be just a stand-alone process – systems delivering rock-solid planning information must exist as a backbone and organizations must be engaged.