I’ll be participating in my first Twitter chat tomorrow – I hope you’ll join me! The topic is The Continuing Emergence of Sales and Operations Planning. We’ll be live on Tuesday April 26 at 1pm Pacific time / 4pm Eastern time.

I’m going to be the guest for #SCMchat, hosted by Jeff Ashcroft  aka @SupplyChainNtwk. Here’s what Jeff has to say about it:

#SCMchat allows us to get to know SCM greats better & also get together to discuss cool SupplyChain and Logistics topics.

To chat, simply use the hashtag #SCMchat to be included in #SCMchat transcript. If you aren’t on Twitter, you can follow along using your browser to just listen! http://bit.ly/fJqqdf

Participants will have a chance to ask questions. The challenge will be keeping answers to 140 characters!

In our last post, we talked about the new S&OP Master Class videos on our site. Check this out: Dallas does S&OP. A video tour to help you find your way around all the cool stuff we’re adding:

Guided Tour of the Steelwedge Website

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.

With the growing recognition of the fundamental importance and value of adopting and effective S&OP (Sales and Operations Planning) process, SAP customers are increasingly looking to Steelwedge as the only solution available that can drive an automated S&OP process that rapidly integrates SAP, Salesforce.com, and other key data.   Joint SAP Steelwedge customers include Honeywell, Nvidia, Harley Davidson, and Spansion.

With the failure of the SAP S&OP xAPP and the lack of a viable solution for S&OP inside SAP APO, SAP users face difficult challenges in leveraging their investments to enable a truly effective, fact-based process.  Moreover, users of financial performance management (FPM) systems such as SAP Outlooksoft, Hyperion, or Cognos, are adopting Steelwedge S&OP as the onel solution that truly ties together financial, operational, and sales information to create an integrated Sales and Operations Plan.   In addition, companies are increasingly asking Steelwedge to bridge information provided by demand planning, demand forecasting, supply planning, APS and other systems.

The Steelwedge approach is to incorporate existing demand, new product, sales, and financial information in a normalized (single view) way such that information is bridged, users can override plans based on their specific view/role inside an organzation.