UTK Supply Chain Strategy & Management Forum
Nov 4-6, 2008
Contact:
Dr. John P. (Paul) Dittmann
Director of Corporate Partnerships
Demand & Supply Integration Forums
The University of Tennessee
College of Business
310 Stokely Management Ctr.
Knoxville, TN 37996-0530
jdittman@utk.edu

Webcast July 8 - Best Practices Leadership Forum: Five Easy Fixes: How you can quickly improve your S&OP Performance
Dr. David L. Anderson, Managing Director of Supply Chain Ventures
Tuesday, July 8, 10AM Pacific, 12Noon Central, 1PM Eastern

Webcast May 20 - Best Practices Leadership Forum: Steelwedge Solutions Summit - Roadmap to Mastering S&OP and Preview of One-Click Planning
Steelwedge Vice President Business Development Chris Givens
Tuesday, May 20
1pm Eastern, 10am Pacific
View Recorded Webcast

Webcast April 29 - Best Practices Leadership Forum: Emerging Trends in S&OP
Deloitte Consulting Strategy & Operations Director Bob Boehm, Senior Manager John La Bouff and Steelwedge VP Solutions E.J. Tavella
Tuesday, April 29
1pm Eastern, 10am Pacific
View Recorded Webcast

Webcast March 25 - Best Practices Leadership Forum: Managing Demand and Supply Uncertainty in S&OP
Professor Blake Johnson, Consulting Assistant Professor Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University Consulting
Tuesday, March 25
1pm Eastern, 10am Pacific
View Recorded Webcast

Webcast Feb 26 - Best Practices Leadership Forum: Demand and Supply Integration--The Strategic Imperative of S&OP"
Dr. Theodore P. Stank,
Head, Department of Marketing & Transportation UTK
Tuesday, Feb 26
1pm Eastern, 10am Pacific
View Recorded Webcast

Previous Webcast Jan 22 - Best Practices Leadership Forum: S&OP--How to Make it Work
Tom Wallace, Author and Educator
Tuesday January 22, 2008
View Recorded Webcast

Steelwedge Momentum

2008-05-13 - Steelwedge Named
"A Company To Keep An Eye On in 2008"

2008-05-06 - Leading Analyst Firm's Report Calls Steelwedge Software the "Dominant Player" in the Pure Play Sales and Operations Planning Category

New Steelwedge Blog

Your opportunity to Participate in an ongoing dialog regarding S&OP and Collaborative Forecasting.
Click to join

SAP Looks to Steelwedge to Support Sales and Operations Planning Initiatives

By Glen Margolis, CEO Steelwedge Software

SAP users are increasingly looking to Steelwedge to solve their sales and operations planning (S&OP) initiatives.

Frustrations related to SAP’s long-vaunted S&OP xApp, the decision by Microsoft in regard to support of SAP’s S&OP solution and other factors are driving SAP customers to seek new solutions for this mission critical problem. As a Certified Powered by Netweaver SAP partner and the leading provider of S&OP to SAP r/3 and SAP APO customers, Steelwedge is increasingly filling the very important role of providing S&OP, collaborative sales forecasting and sales performance management solutions that complement SAP solutions, leverage investments in SAP, and ensure executive visibility into critical business challenges.

Steelwedge has a unique ability to quickly tie together and integrate information from disparate information sources, provide clear performance feedback, balance supply and demand scenarios, and drive executive S&OP.

Integrated Business Planning with Steelwedge

In today’s world, the only certainties are information overload, rapid change and global integration. Corporate executives and planners are tasked with making key decisions in a world that involves far less predictability than ever before. The key to improving strategic decision making and planning processes requires vastly improved integration of organizations, functions, and information. No longer can silo-based planning processes co-exist. Finance, Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Operations and other divisions need to work together.

How is this achieved? Integrated business planning (IBP) provides the answer. By engaging all functions, pulling together disparate sources of information, and creating a truly collaborative planning and forecasting process, enormous progress can be made. Steelwedge offers a unique and effective approach to this problem. By integrating SAP FPM (Financial Performance Management) with SAP APO Supply Chain Management (SCM), Salesforce.com CRM information, and other tools, Steelwedge is able to drive a truly unified, “one number forecast” that engages organizations and builds consensus.

The New Steelwedge One-Click Planning Solution

Steelwedge is realizing this powerful vision today by working closely with its customers as well as with SAP and other partners and recently announced One-Click Planning™, a solution to augment SAP and drive executive sales and operations planning (S&OP.)

One Click Planning enables global enterprises to achieve maximum financial and operational performance from their S&OP process by providing executives and users the ability to go directly from an email alert to value-added planning and exception resolution. One-Click Planning features a new Steelwedge Planning Work Center that provides users visibility to critical planning, transaction and performance management data required to execute the S&OP process.

“One-Click-Planning enables Steelwedge to build on its leadership position in the S&OP marketplace,” according to Steelwedge VP, Product Management Chris Givens. “Based on our strong track record in helping enterprises enable collaborative sales forecasting and bridging the gaps between sales and operations, our customer feedback was a key driver for us to enhance our existing workflow and adding the new work center, to be more streamlined, user friendly and configurable.”

“While our current Steelwedge solution is critical to enabling the collaborative sales forecasting and operations planning process, we are pleased with Steelwedge “One-Click Planning”, which further streamlines our planning efforts, providing quick access to the information we need to make faster decisions that impact the bottom line,” said the COO of a leading high technology manufacturer and Steelwedge customer. “One of the long standing challenges of S&OP is to provide an automated workflow driven solution that engages executives and planners across multiple functions to update plans on a scheduled and exception basis.”

One-Click-Planning uses email alerts with direct access to secure role based planning information to simplify and streamline the S&OP process and increase cross-functional participation from executives to planners. The new planning work center brings together critical information required for users to easily execute their monthly S&OP process including: Steelwedge S&OP Work Tasks, Planning Templates, Performance Dashboards and Exception Monitor.

As a Certified SAP Partner, the Steelwedge S&OP Release 4.5 is schedule for general availability on June 30, 2008. The beta version was showcased at the May 20 Steelwedge Solutions Summit.