Webcast Series: Oct 30, Nov 27, Dec 11-- Best Practices Leadership Forum
Join us for a 3 part S&OP Web Seminar Series with APICS...

Part 1: S&OP: Closing the Chasm Between Theory and Practice
October 30th 10AM Pacific
Click to Enroll

Part 2: S&OP Implementation:
A Case Study
November 27th 10AM Pacific
Click to learn more

Part 3: Best Practices: Lessons learned from the field
December 11th 10AM Pacific
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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 Sales Forecasting/Planning Client

Emerson is a diversified global technology company that provides products and services for a wide range of industries, commercial markets and end-users, including consumers. Recognized widely for its engineering capabilities and outstanding management process, Emerson has more than 128,000 employees and more than 270 manufacturing locations worldwide.

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

Roadmap for Successful Sales & Operations Planning at Monster Cable: A Case Study

Recap of the Steelwedge Best Practices Leadership Forum Webcast, September 25, 2007, featuring Ruben Andreu, Demand Planning Manager, Monster Cable

Monster Cable is a high-end producer of consumer electronics accessories for audio-video connectivity, power conditioning, custom cable installations and MP3. It is privately owned and run by Founder/CEO Noel Lee selling 4,000 products in more than 100 countries with 800 new product introductions annually. In the US, Monster products are sold at specialty, high-end and big-box retailers including Apple Stores, Best Buy, Circuit City, Home Depot, RadioShack and Wal-Mart.

There are seven key challenges for consumer electronics manufacturers:

• Evolving technology in HD connectivity.
• ASP’s declining at an accelerated pace at retailers.
• Shrinking life cycle of products.
• Market segmentation, multiple outlet alternatives for consumers.
• Stiff competition with less shelf space.
• Customers looking for more frequent replenishment,
  suppliers to do more.
• Globalization of sources of supply.

Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) at Monster Cable is about people, process and tools—in that order. The right people and processes began with the launch of an integrated ERP system (PeopleSoft) in 2005. Then we adopted standardized Supply Chain process definitions and measurements using the SCOR model, and established collaborative business processes (CPFR.) A Demand Planning team was formed including new players with a pool of resources – CE Electronics mfg experience, CPIM / CPM / MBA education. Finally, we identified key participants and roles in the S&OP meeting.

In Feb06 we adopted the Oliver Wight model with the goal to balance demand to supply and inventory. We wanted to improve inventory velocity thru the extended Supply Chain (from our supplier’s supplier to our customer’s customer.) We took a product family approach to implementation setting up weekly working sessions and monthly management reviews. One year later, by Feb07, 80% of Monster revenue was covered by S&OP.
And most important decision-making was based on the latest and most accurate set of data.

Initially, there were five major challenges to the S&OP implementation: (1) Organizational structure for change; (2) The education of all parties; (3) Data management including (a) Manual data aggregation, manipulation and analytics (Excel based), (b) Incomplete data for Financial decisions (missing revenue and margin calculations) and (c) Managing data in spreadsheets leading to multiple versions of the information; (4) Result: Inability to scale up benefits of S&OP across more product categories; and (5) Difficulty expanding S&OP globally.

With people and processes in place we set the criteria for an S&OP automation tool:

• Implementation velocity
• Cost effectiveness
• Ability to meet our “manual” data analysis process halfway and improve it.
• Minimal interruptions and manageable resources requirements during peak-season.
• Easy-to-use interface for streamlined training of users.

Steelwedge Software best met the criteria and offered a Rapid Implementation Methodology:

• Easy data-transfer integration.
  • “Formal methodology for requirements gathering”.
  • “Great hands-on Interview approach”
  • “Great validation”
  • “Formal standards that work!”
• Project Management
  • “Solid documentation and PM methodology”
  • “Clear explanation of roles and responsibilities”
  • “Successful knowledge transfer”
• Tech Expertise
  • “Knowledgeable PM support from SW Solution Architect”
  • “SW technical resources well versed in SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle)”.

The Kick off meeting was Sep’06. The “Go-live” celebration Jan’07--less than 15 weeks from start-to-end! The S&OP organizational structure--roles, reviews and frequency looks like this:

Role-based collaboration using Steelwedge can provide quick looks at metrics, a history of forecast override reasons, cell drill-downs and graphs of selected time series. It facilitates all functions in any unit: Sales and Marketing submit forecast override at the product units level; Finance Submits forecast override at the revenue $ level; and Supply Chain can run S&OP “what-if” scenarios + administration of assigned tasks.

We have developed Product Family S&OP Template Reports (units, $)--Aggregate view of Shipments, Backlog, Forecast, Inventory, Supply, Projected Inventory and Slice & dice capability. Additionally, we have Custom Reports--Data from current period or previous periods, ALL time series, attributes subject to reporting as Steelwedge is a powerful data mining tool.

We can measure value received from the S&OP process in four ways:

Cost

• Return on investment estimated at 4 months
• Cost avoidance of dedicated demand planning data analyst

Quality

• Decision making done on reliable up-to-date information
• Plan of record data allows for powerful “rear-view” mirror analysis

Flexibility

• Real time visibility, “internet-like” experience
• Effective exception management

Delivery

• 25% estimated reduction on stock-outs
• 30% improvement on forecast accuracy
• 20% improvement on inventory turns