SALES FORECASTING MANAGEMENT FORUM
EXECUTIVE ROUNDTABLE
When: September 6-8, 2006
Preliminary Schedule
Where: Knoxville Marriott

A SPONSOR ONLY EVENT
Collage - The Roundtable in Review

7th Annual World Class
Sales Forecasting Management Conference
When: May 15-17, 2007
Where: Knoxville Marriott Hotel

VIEW 2006 CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

Previous Webcast--
Sales Forecasting—
How To Improve Collaboration
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
1pm Eastern, 12noon Central,
10am Pacific
Dr. Tom Mentzer,
Ph.D. Marketing & Logistics
Dr. Mark Moon,
Ph. D, Marketing & Logistics
University of Tennessee
Click here to view recording

Previous Webcast--
Selling Beyond the
Sales Force--
Leveraging Technology
to Improve Sales Effectiveness
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
1pm Eastern, 12noon Central, 10am Pacific
Dr. Jag Sheth, Marketing Professor Emory University
Click here to view recording

Guidelines for S&OP in the Multi-site Enterprise
Wednesday, January 11, 2006, 2pm Eastern, 11am Pacific
Principal Speakers
Share Green, Director,
Program Management,
Teledyne Technologies EMS ,
Glen Margolis, SVP Services, Steelwedge Software
Click here to view recording

TMC.net
June 2006
Steelwedge Offers Tellabs Sales, CRM Help
By David Sims

BusinessWeek Online
June 2006
The Real Disaster: Inadequate Preparation
By Kevin O'Marah

Chief Supply Chain Officer June2006
S&OP Customers Go Cross-Functional and Show Results
By Jacqueline Emigh

Manufacturing Business Technology (MBT) November 2005
Cover Story: Balancing Supply & Demand
By Sidney Hill, Jr.

Baseline Magazine (11/08/05)
Air Products in the Pipeline
By Mel Duval, 11/08/05

START Magazine July-August 2005
Looking Forward: Forecasting and Consensus Planning
By Christine Pfefferle, Director of Global Demand and
Order Management

Turbo Charging Your Sales Forecasting Process
By Anil Gupta, The Applications Marketing Group

The Sales Funnel - a Critical Part of the Demand Planning Process
By EJ Tavella, Senior Director
of Business Development, Steelwedge Software

If you have ideas for future articles or how we can improve this newsletter, please send us your feedback

When is a Next Generation Forecasting and Planning System Required?

It is a sad fact of life, but most Demand Forecasting and Planning [1] systems cannot do everything you would like them to do. The question then becomes - does the current planning system effectively address your most important business issues? This article discusses some of those important business issues, including the cost of ignoring or over-simplifying them and puts them into real-world context.

Realizing there are short-comings in existing demand forecasting and planning system(s), executives have to choose one of the following options:

• Ignore the shortcomings and live with what they have
• Perform analysis in a system outside of the existing planning system, e.g., offline analysis in Excel
• Upgrade existing planning systems (if feasible)
• Invest in a next-generation Demand Forecasting and Planning System designed to address your specific requirements.
  
  
  

Improving Planning and Collaboration through
Sales Planning and Performance Management (SPPM)

By combining the advantages of On-Demand (hosted), traditional enterprise software and Microsoft Excel, Steelwedge Software, Inc. has created a powerful, next-generation planning tool. Imagine having the enterprise software advantages of advanced architecture, collaboration, security, scalability, data integrity timeliness and drill down with the familiarity, flexibility, ease of use and power of Excel.

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In most companies, Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) is a tactical plan(1) designed to align the business by balancing supply and demand. It is a key business process in manufacturing companies.

The process varies greatly across companies; from simple, semi-regular meetings to an on-going, structured process with automated data integration that aligns the enterprise in one plan of record. Appendix 1 provides a summary of the evolutionary path from “Basic” to current “Best Practices” in S&OP.