PHOENIX, AZ--(Marketwired - May 21, 2013) - Gartner Supply Chain Executive Summit -- Steelwedge, the leading provider of cloud-based Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) solutions, today announced the availability of its latest release here, at the largest industry conference for supply chain executives. The new Steelwedge solution is targeted to help global manufacturers more quickly and accurately make supply/demand tradeoff decisions in the face of continual market change.
"The world's leading manufacturers are recognizing that increasingly complex, interdependent businesses -- and the plans built to manage them -- will only survive with better agility and resilience built into them," said Glen Margolis , CEO of Steelwedge. "This agility comes from a potent combination of company-wide insight and systems to put that insight into action. This release of our planning solution with cloud-powered analytics, apps and high performance throughput of big data is designed to help our customers better out-maneuver market volatility and drive growth."
The Steelwedge spring release extends the value of the company's integrated business planning platform in three ways:
New: Steelwedge S&OP Insight: Complex Data. Delivered iPad Easy. Now, the rich cross-functional data collected in the Steelwedge planning system is aggregated, analyzed and presented in top-line dashboards for iPads or smartphones as well as online and Excel-based dashboards and reports. With Steelwedge S&OP Insight, corporate leaders can review real-time aggregated summary content across divisions, geographies, hierarchies and units/dollars anytime on their mobile devices. With a dozen pre-configured best-practice metrics, Steelwedge S&OP Insight makes it easy to pinpoint exceptions and business KPIs for further focus.
Powered by the industry's only planning analytics engine, Steelwedge S&OP Insight combines online analytics and planning to deliver rich contextual planning intelligence in a fraction of the time of any other approach on the market. For more information on Steelwedge S&OP Insight, click here to view the data sheet, and click here to watch a product demo.
Industry analysts acknowledge that S&OP analytics are sorely needed to drive better, faster planning decisions. Many supply chain analysts note that there is a substantial separation today between operational data and S&OP planning. By contrast, Steelwedge is putting analytics into the center of customers' supply chain performance -- where it needs to be.
New: Steelwedge S&OP Apps Architecture™: Adopts "Orphaned" Processes; Adapts Planning Your Way Often, competitive advantage comes from the way a business is run -- and the unique processes and KPIs it sets for itself. These could range from new product prioritization to inventory segmentation parameters.
Traditionally, there has been no way to include those special processes in an automated planning solution. Now, customers and partners can develop their own apps, built directly on the Steelwedge platform for seamless integration with the powerful demand, supply, partner collaboration and executive-level S&OP data that is captured in its single solution.
Based on customer demand, the company is also offering a set of pre-configured apps for demand policy, segmentation, and stocking strategy. Click here for more information on these apps and the Steelwedge S&OP Open Apps Architecture.
New: Big-Data-Enabled Foundation. Faster performance for faster decisions Steelwedge has invested in technology infrastructure to extend the cloud-based platform's power to quickly process massive amounts of data -- anywhere in the world -- faster, for better decision-making on critical planning issues. Steelwedge customers tasked with tracking, managing and analyzing up to billions of planning details -- from SKUs and components to suppliers and customer transactions -- benefit from the newest technology enhancements delivered through the cloud without incurring the significant incremental infrastructure costs they would have with an on-premise S&OP solution. The recent Steelwedge infrastructure upgrades encompass investments in the following areas:
- Storage: Faster reporting and analytics and faster planning (overrides and aggregation)
- Network: High throughput, low latency, quality of service and failover. Rapidly transfer large files with minimal latency
- Edge Caching: Faster performance for remote users
- Memory and CPU: In-memory add-ons support columnar indexing of data and fast "what-if" analysis
Blake Johnson, Stanford University consulting professor and founder of range planning company Aztral, said: "The big data tsunami is at the front of every business, supply chain and educational discussion. To create business value with it, however, it must be integrated with a company's core processes and accessible to the people who manage them. Steelwedge's approach to integrating data and enabling analytics is industry-leading, and is driving a sea change in S&OP."
See us at the Gartner Conference at booth #208. Listen to Steelwedge CEO Glen Margolis speak about the latest product release here .
About Steelwedge Steelwedge Software is the leading Integrated Business Planning solution provider. Steelwedge's cloud-based Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) software solutions connect people, process and technology to power a single view of a company's business. In a volatile global business environment, that single line of sight powers reliable "what if" scenario modelling that pinpoints the financial impact of supply-demand trade-off decisions. Some of the world's largest manufacturing companies including Jaguar Land Rover, Lenovo , MetroPCS , Monsanto and Sony, trust Steelwedge to help them mitigate risk and rapidly adapt to global economic, political and environmental change through best-in-class S&OP. Visit www.steelwedge.com . Follow the company on Twitter @steelwedge .
© 2013 Steelwedge and all Steelwedge product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of Steelwedge Software, Inc. All other company and product names are trademarks of their respective holders.
Media Contact: Lauren Bossers lbossers@steelwedge.com
