 |
 |
 |
| Best Practices |
Supply Chain Management John T. Mentzer Sales Forecasting Management John T. Mentzer and Carol C. Bienstock, The
Impact of Forecasting Improvement on Return on Shareholder Value
|
| Conferences & Events |
Enterprise Planning Webinar--The Seven Keys to Better Forecasting March 16, 2005, 1pm Eastern, 10am Pacific Principal Speaker-- Dr. John T. (Tom) Mentzer, Ph.D. Register here for this webinar 5th Annual World Class Sales and Forecasting Management Conference, May 10-12, at University of Tennessee - Knoxville, College of Business Administration, Sales Forecasting Management Forum Click here for more info Technology Ventures 2005 at Palo Alto Hills Golf & Country Club, Palo Alto, CA. Click here for more info |
| Beyond the Spreadsheet: The Enterprise Plan of Record | ||||||
| Dr. J. Thomas Mentzer, Professor of Marketing and Logistics, University of Tennessee. | ||||||
Maintaining sales force effectiveness, ensuring strong margins,
supporting high order fill-rates, avoiding large inventory write-offs,
and managing regulatory compliance requires companies to formulate
strategic, tactical and supply plans based on a realistic view of
demand. That's why in today's uncertain economic environment, enterprise
planning processes have become business critical. While
millions of dollars in SCM, ERP and CRM system investments have
helped improve efficiencies within each area of the organization,
these systems were not designed for facilitating cross-functional
business planning. As a result, most companies still rely on spreadsheets
to support executive-level planning, while source data remains
buried in enterprise systems. However, spreadsheets lack… |
||||||
| Managing Change and Uncertainty in New Product Introduction Planning | Managing the Mix: Creating Demand Plans for Configured Products and their Underlying Components | |||||
| Anders Gjerde, Senior Manager, Steelwedge Software, Inc. | Glen Margolis, Founder/EVP Services, Steelwedge Software | |||||
New products
account for over 30% of sales revenue in many high technology companies.
In spite of their importance, forecasting demand and managing this
planning process remains a conundrum. In this article we discuss
two key aspects of New Product Introduction planning and management
that many companies struggle with:
 |
This is about one of the fastest moving targets in industry today.
Configured products, those with bundled components e.g. PC, monitor,
keyboard, mouse, etc., are difficult to manage because they’re
always on the move as components tend to change when new versions
emerge, and as customer preferences change.
Managing the product mix, or as some call it product configuration
planning, is the process of creating demand plans for product
combinations and options that customers will buy. It includes
demand for configured product overall, and demand for the underlying
Components. This is critical because: |
|||||
| Case Study - Enterasys | ||||||
| Enterprise Plan of Record in Action at a Networking Company | ||||||
Situation/Issues : Enterasys Networks is a global provider of Secure Networks TM for enterprise customers.
The company found that its key metrics such as order-to-deliver time and fill rate were not doing well against
the benchmarks set by their customers. They also realized that under their current Sales and Operations Planning
(S&OP) process, each function extracted information from SAP and other sources and prepared its own plans
employing spreadsheets. Reconciling the spreadsheets and information was a slow cumbersome process. . |
||||||
3825 Hopyard, Suite 155, Pleasanton, CA 94588
Copyright 2005 STEELWEDGE, Inc. All rights reserved.
Click here to unsubscribe