Tag Archives: supply chain

Partner Perspectives: Got Agility?

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Partnership, as defined by Wikipedia, is “an arrangement where parties agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests.”

I believe the fundamental reasons people and organizations establish partnerships, including software vendors and channel partners, have not changed. It’s collaboration for mutual benefit and, most importantly, to drive value for our customers.

Always the pragmatist, I did some research to prove the mutual interests claim. Indeed, I found this to be true. Here are just a few examples for anyone who doubts collaboration in partnership yields mutual reward.

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis: Can’t have a funny guy without his straight man. They took that act to the bank.

Peanut Butter and Jelly: I have had my share of peanut butter sandwiches. I’m pretty sure the addition of jelly to the mix was the basis for the expression 1 plus 1 makes 3.

Lewis & Clark and Sacagawea: Collaboration at its greatest. Partnership between rock star explorers and interpreter/guide extraordinaire opens doors to travel to the Pacific coast. They also brought back information about European dealers connected to global markets. A primitive supply chain in the making!

While motives to partner remain the same, the landscape to do is constantly disrupted by global economic forces, new technologies, big data and this thing called the cloud.

So how do software vendors and partners maintain equilibrium, even thrive, in this volatile environment? Some don’t. Those companies who are unable, or unwilling, to adapt may find themselves “stuck” in an old business model that is no longer in demand.

But agile organizations—VARs, consulting firms and service providers who have stayed in the game by reinventing themselves—will be here for a long, long time. These companies understand the new world of cloud solutions, big data, subscription software and a customer-centric approach to…everything.

They embrace the challenge of migrating an on-premise solution to SaaS. They transform themselves from reseller to full-service provider, or from implementation team to consultant and trusted advisor. They get “social” and understand that it’s not just big data, but what you do with that data. They never stop learning because they know change is coming.

(Shameless plug alert…)

sw partners graphicAnd they align with technology vendors, like Steelwedge, the leading provider of cloud-based integrated business planning (IBP) solutions, who provide them the ideal platform on which to build their business.

I invite you to meet some of our partners here. If you are interested in becoming a Steelwedge partner, or would like more information regarding the Partner Program, fill out this online form.

Thanks for reading. Have an opinion, comment or question? Chime in!

Partner Perspectives: The Shift to the Cloud

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We live in a more complex and interdependent business environment than ever before. Companies large and small must navigate a sea of economic, political and environmental change, and respond to that change without compromising the delicate balance among supply, demand and profitability.

We know that customers work with Steelwedge because our cloud-based integrated business planning (IBP) solutions enable them to plan, perform and profit in a volatile, ever-changing business environment. We also know they work with us because of our people. We recognize that technology is one part of the equation for success, but people and process play a significant role in enabling that technology.

This is precisely why we’ve built a team of the most experienced, capable S&OP professionals and partner with the industry’s best.

A State of Flux

Consolidation, continuous changes in technology, shrinking IT budgets and a host of other forces have left customers, vendors and partners alike in a state of flux. We are seeing rapid adoption and transition to the cloud-based technology with software as a service (SaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and more. As a result, customers demand faster time to value, lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and “cloud ready” partners.

As CRN recently reported, channel partners must reinvent themselves as the market shifts from traditional on-premise enterprise software to cloud solutions and services. In the article, Gartner’s Tiffany Bova says, “Innovation by the channel is a must… If you don’t innovate, you probably won’t survive, not because you did anything wrong, but because the market doesn’t need you anymore.”

So the days of simply offering a product to customers are long gone. Customers expect partners to be solution providers who deliver the right technology solution, best practices and ongoing support.

In the cloud.

The message is simple: Partners who don’t adapt will be left behind.

Enter Steelwedge

The Steelwedge Partner Program is built on our 100% cloud-based Integrated Business Planning Platform. Organizations that partner with Steelwedge have the tools, resources and support to expand their footprint, assemble the RIGHT solution for their customers and offer a faster time to value delivery model—all through the cloud.

In the coming weeks and months, you’ll hear a lot more about the new Steelwedge Partner Program and our ecosystem of Alliance, Channel and Technology partners. In the meantime, please click here to learn more.

Power Your Planning: Steelwedge Demo at Your Desk

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Got 30 minutes? Spend it with us on March 20, at 12:00 noon EDT, for the Steelwedge Demo at Your Desk. We invite you to take a peek inside the cloud to see how sales and operations technology can drive meaningful scale, speed and performance for your global planning initiatives.

Steelwedge executives EJ Tavella and Roger Singh will host the live, interactive demonstration and open discussion, during which you’ll see the solution that companies such as Jaguar Land Rover, Lenovo, PZ Cussons and MetroPCS are using to power their planning and decision-making process.

Demo at Your DeskDuring the Demo at Your Desk, you’ll learn how the Steelwedge cloud-based planning technology can help you:

  • Improve your demand forecasting
  • Increase visibility
  • Reduce your inventory
  • Improve your margin
  • Model “what-if” alternatives

As business volatility has risen, increasing numbers of enterprise leaders have been driven to look at planning software to increase their agility—being able to quickly make the right decisions to navigate changes in demand and supply. Last year, a study of manufacturing business leaders showed that nearly 90 percent saw business agility as a key company imperative. Yet less than one third of them felt their organization was set up for agility. This agility gap is driving a huge interest in S&OP.

An interesting point: almost all of the leaders surveyed in the aforementioned study were using S&OP process—but only about 20 percent were powering that process with technology.

But S&OP technology adoption is on the rise. Industry leaders across discrete and process manufacturing sectors including high tech, consumer tech, industrials, chemical, agribusiness and CPG are increasingly seeking out technology solutions to supercharge their S&OP processes. Gartner’s recent market report on S&OP technology shows that this market is growing faster than any other segment of the supply chain industry.

Further, cloud-based solutions are driving the fastest adoption…and Steelwedge is seen by Gartner as the leading global provider of cloud-based integrated business planning solutions. The reason why is clear: Steelwedge technology unites your critical supply, demand and finance teams with all the data in whatever system each group has—all in one platform for faster collaboration and decision-making.

Don’t miss the opportunity to learn more during the Steelwedge Demo at Your Desk on March 20, at 12:00 noon EDT. Register here!

Candy Dish S&OP

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Candy S&OPThere are certain stock images associated with Valentine’s Day: flowers, hand holding, heart-shaped everything, especially candies. Every sweet manufacturer seems to have its own Valentine twist on its product.

Candy: it’s such an unassuming piece of sugary happiness, and one thing we’ve added to our headquarters office front desk is a whole dish full of it. There’s a pretty big selection of candies in the dish, from mini chocolate bars to hard fruit-flavored candies, soft chews, mints, et al. The office has consumers in the form of employees and visitors to the office who enjoy all the different types of candy available, with the chocolate being, perhaps not surprisingly, the favorite among them.

It occurs to me that there’s a mini S&OP process arising that keeps the candy dish bringing joy to the office. First there’s the tracking of which candies and candy types disappear the fastest, how much of which type to order so as not to take up too much valuable stocking space or to hold onto any type of candy too long. There’s the process of changing out the candy types every few days to keep the dish interesting to our consumers while ensuring the new and untried types are going to actually be eaten and not lie ignored in the bowl. What suppliers are going to deliver the types of candy we want with the best balance of availability, speed of delivery, and cost to us? Where do we get a candy we want in event that one of our suppliers runs out?

For our suppliers, where did they get their candy? How many wholesalers did they work with to bring us variety, and how many manufacturers did the wholesalers work with? How many other manufacturers did each of those manufacturers deal with to get each ingredient for their candies, and how many raw material suppliers did they work with to get things like corn for making corn syrup, cacao and milk for making chocolate, seeds for making dyes, or sugar cane for refining sugar?

How much S&OP did each of these companies use for their own products? What happens if just one link in the chain is broken at any given time—how would the chain persist on its course with the least disruption, and how much would they have to inflate final costs to keep production going?

Talk about big data.

How many hands did all this go through, how much planning was involved, and how many hours of work were put in just so we have our bowl of sugary happiness at work?

S&OP and supply chain management touch our everyday lives, every day, often with not too much thought on the consumers’ end except that they’re enjoying their favorite types of candy. It’s a gentle reminder that good S&OP is like good manners: when done right, its presence goes largely unrecognized, but its absence is certainly noticed.

It’s Storm Season: Is Your Supply Chain Insurance in Place?

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It took only minutes in 2011 for natural disasters to break apart supply chains that took global companies 30 years to build.

As a result, companies worldwide moved supply chain insurance to the top of their corporate agendas.  Supply chain/business interruption losses are the largest unknown; but for context, already insured companies incurred more than $55 billion in losses in 2011. Today companies can insure carry up to $1 billion in supply chain insurance, ranging in cost from 2% to an undisclosed a la carte pricing determined by presented risk.  Supply Chain insurance went from a “nice to have” to a matter of national criticality, as evidenced by a Presidential directive in January this year, when President Barack Obama directed the Departments of State and Homeland Security to come up with a plan to protect the $14.6 trillion U.S. economy from interruptions in the supply chain. The White House released a National Strategy for Global Supply Chain Security to make recommendations on identifying risks and making commercial infrastructure more resilient.

“We have seen that disruptions to supply chains caused by natural disasters — earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions — and from criminal and terrorist networks seeking to exploit the system or use it as a means of attack can adversely impact global economic growth and productivity,” President Obama said in a letter earlier this year.

Are you insured for Storm Season?

As companies swept up and wrung out after the carnage to their bottom lines, it is understandable that they’d want a policy to help pay for the damage. Yet, that is only part of a smart insurance plan.  In fact, just like the medical industry has evolved to drive a heavy pre-emptive care agenda to boost healthier living and mitigate avoidable health issues, so too should businesses explore pre-emptive supply chain insurance.

Indeed, many are.  According to International Data Corporation, a leading technology research firm, the #1 supply chain “solution” for manufacturers is Sales & Operations Planning.  S&OP –a process established nearly 30 years ago –uniquely unites together people and process to better balance supply and demand. Yet,  over the past decade—driven by global business volatility—S&OP has garnered a new level of attention and leverage