Software to enable manufacturing enterprise plan of record, according to provider
Pleasanton, CA — April 20, 2004 — Steelwedge Inc. today announced Steelwedge Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP), the latest module in its Enterprise Demand Management (EDM) software suite. According to the company, S&OP is designed to support the entire sales and operations planning process for high-tech, electronics, telecom, and network equipment and other complex manufacturing companies.
S&OP is a monthly, executive-level business planning process for aligning customer, product, finance and operational plans. Steelwedge said that as the U.S. economy emerges from its recent downturn, S&OP is becoming a critical focus for manufacturers as they work to formulate business plans that manage growth and profitability based on a consolidated, real-time view of demand in order to maintain fill-rates and avoid inventory write-offs.
Built on the Steelwedge EDM platform, Steelwedge S&OP combines user interaction with EDM capabilities so that organizations can develop an enterprise plan of record.
A common repository for planning assumptions, the enterprise plan of record integrates, aggregates and reconciles operational plans from across the enterprise. This allows management to identify variances, test alternative scenarios, establish a baseline for key performance metrics, drive functional plans, and track actual results.
Based on a consensus view of demand, the enterprise plan of record incorporates a wide range of operational data such as sales pipelines and goals, customer order allocations, marketing promotions, inventory and manufacturing build plans, order backlogs, bills of materials, product and pricing information, revenue and margin plans, and annual operating plans.
Rob Schneider, Steelwedge president and CEO, said that in order to create an enterprise plan of record, companies must be able to convert data across types and drill down to understand the assumptions underlying each set of data. "Having worked for years at various [enterprise resource planning] and [supply chain management] vendors, my colleagues at Steelwedge took a fresh approach to supporting the S&OP process," he explained. "We built a next-generation planning platform that effectively fills the gap between corporate strategy and departmental planning, enabling management to easily gather and reconcile disparate data across functional silos."
