As we exit another wild, unpredictable year filled with economic, political and environmental upheaval—resulting in changes wrought of inspiration, desperation and perspiration, a virtual salute.

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…

Two weeks ago, more than 800 people registered for a terrific conversation with industry pundit and author, Tom Wallace.  We simply ran out of time to answer all the questions live, so have captured common themes and answered them here. This is the first of a two-part series.

Q: How do you best manage the proliferation of S&OP meetings? People inherently object to having meetings for meetings sake!

It is important to differentiate between meeting and working sessions. Executive S&OP meetings are intended to be very efficient and structured, given the CXO level participants. These meetings should have a very specific agenda with clearly defined goals for the meeting.

Working sessions are more of a combination of structured agenda as well as unstructured time to discuss collaboratively on various topics. Demand review and supply review meetings are examples of these working sessions.

From a technology perspective, the solution should provide the ability to document business context, assumptions, action items and opportunities for further follow-up and tracking.

Q: How do you handle “what if” analysis & scenario analysis within Steelwedge?

Steelwedge provides a platform that balances supply, demand and finance and enables the end-to-end S&OP process. Scenario management and what-if analysis can be implemented at any stage of this process: demand forecasting, supply planning or executive S&OP. For example, as part of the out of the box application called Compass Express that is implemented by this platform, 26 scenarios can be created as part of the Executive S&OP process. These scenarios can be compared based on pre-defined metrics and the best scenario can be ‘promoted’ to be the plan of record for the organization.

Q: How do you do the Bill of Material explosion and how is SW exploding the confirmed demand plan to material…

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.

I’m very pleased to announce that Steelwedge has reached an important milestone today in our growth as a company.  We’ve received a $16 million growth equity investment led by Mainsail Partners, accelerating our efforts to serve our rapidly expanding customer base while continuing to build breakthrough sales and operations planning (S&OP) and integrated business planning (IBP) products.

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