Webcasts: Nov 27, Dec 11--
Best Practices Leadership Forum--S&OP Web Seminar Series with APICS...

Nov 27--S&OP Implementation:
A Case Study
Click to learn more

Dec 11--Best Practices:
Lessons learned from the field
1pm Eastern, 10AM Pacific
Click to learn more

Previous Webcast 7/31 --
Best Practices Leadership Forum -- Implementing a Collaborative Planning Forecasting and Replenishment Program
Ron Ireland, Principal,
Oliver Wight Consultants
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT
View Recorded Webcast

Previous Webcast 5/8 --
Best Practices Leadership Forum -- Sales and Operations Planning for Integrated Business Management
George Palmatier, Principal,
Oliver Wight Consultants
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT
View Recorded Webcast

Previous Webcast 4/3 --
Best Practices Leadership Forum -- How to Extend SAP for effective Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP)
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern
Mr. Padman Ramankutty, CEO, Intrigosys, LLC., former CEO and Founder, Bristlecone, Inc.
View Recorded Webcast

Previous Webcast 2/27 --
Best Practices Leadership Forum --S&OP Best Practices:
A Case Study
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
1pm Eastern, 12noon Central,
10am Pacific
Dr. Chris Gopal, Partner,
Deloitte Consulting and former VP Operations Strategy, Dell, Inc.
View Webcast Presentation

Steelwedge Momentum:
New Partners

Salesforce.com AppExchange
Steelwedge OnDemand sales and operations planning solution for salesforce.com's AppExchange.
The Steelwedge solution extends the AppExhange CRM functionality to provide comprehensive sales forecasting and sales and operations planning (S&OP) for manufacturers of complex products. Built on the Force.com platform, the Steelwedge sales and operations planning solution is immediately available as an integrated client application with AppExchange at www.salesforce.com/appexchange

Teradata
Steelwedge has entered into an agreement with NCR’s Teradata, the data warehousing leader, to provide the S&OP component in Teradata’s Demand Signal Repository (DSR) enabling large enterprises to achieve real Demand Drive Supply Networks (DDSNs.)

Industry Blogs
Here are the Industry Blogs that
we watch, and you might want to:

www.crmblog.org
www.supplychainer.com
www.andyonenterprisesoftware.com
www.siliconvalleywatcher.com
blogs.ittoolbox.com/crm
blogs.ittoolbox.com/supplychain
www.vics.org/blog

Aberdeen Group S&OP Study--
Executive Sales and Operations Planning:
Process and Technology Strategies
June 2007

(Editor’s Note: The Executive Summary of the Aberdeen Group, Inc. Study on Sales and Operations Planning June 2007, is reprinted in this issue to facilitate getting the complete Study report which is available at www.steelwedge.com )

Executive Summary

Ninety-two percent (92%) of companies indicate that they have an executive
S&OP process in place. However, 62% of companies have not gained any quantifiable financial benefit out of this process. In this benchmark report, Aberdeen benchmarks the extent of financial and operational benefits companies have gained from their S&OP processes, as well as the differentiating characteristics of the Best in Class companies.
A total of 380 respondents participated in this research.
A detailed description of their demographic information is shown
in Appendix A.

Best in Class Performance

Aberdeen used four key performance criteria to distinguish Best in Class companies from Industry Average and Laggard organizations.

• Improved gross margin since 2004
• Reduced logistics cost/sales since 2004
• Improved complete order fill rate since 2004
• Improved average forecast accuracy at a product family
  level since 2004

Based on the above, the following were the absolute performance for the three categories.

Best in Class:
Top 20% of aggregate performance scorers

• Complete order fill rate: 91%
• Gross Margin: 43%
• Logistics costs as a % of sales: 6%

Industry Average:
Middle 50% of aggregate performance scorers

• Complete order fill rate: 85%
• Gross Margin: 36%
• Logistics costs as a % of sales: 12%

Laggard:
Bottom 30% of aggregate performance scorers

• Complete order fill rate: 79%
• Gross Margin: 30%
• Logistics costs as a % of sales: 16%

Source: Aberdeen Group, June 2007

Competitive Maturity Assessment

Survey results show that firms enjoying Best in Class performance shared several common characteristics involving various aspects of process, reporting, data, technology etc.

Best in Class companies are:

• 2X more likely to be able to create multiple scenarios
  to analyze the S&OP plan than All Others.
• 1.8X more likely than All Others to be able to consider the
  KPIs from the previous periods with regards to capacity, forecast accuracy and inventory.
• 2.2X more likely than All Others to be able to continuously
  monitor the S&OP output to ensure plan quality.
• 3X more likely than All Others to have existing systems that
  enable feedback from executive S&OP process to operational
  S&OP process.

Required Actions

In addition to the specific recommendations listed in Chapter 3 of this report, to achieve Best in Class performance, companies must do the following:

• Institute a monthly S&OP planning process. Ensure that there is a formal S&OP meeting and schedule established. Also, make sure there is a full-time S&OP coordinator managing the S&OP process.
• Institute the ability to continuously monitor the S&OP output to ensure plan quality.
• Enable existing systems with the ability to communicate feedback from the executive S&OP process to the operational S&OP process.

© 2007 Aberdeen Group, Inc. Telephone: 617 723 7890
www.aberdeen.com