Steelwedge Software Poised for Growth at Hacienda

By George Walsh, Hacienda Network Staff Writer

Enterprise Software Company Projects Market Expansion from Recent Performance

Steelwedge Software, a supplier of enterprise planning and performance-management software tools, has established its new corporate headquarters in an 8,000 square foot facility at 3875 Hopyard Road. The company, founded in 2000, seeks to help organizations create and validate functional plans (such as sales forecasts, new product introduction plans, demand plans, production plans, and financial plans), align them with business and financial targets, and gain visibility and control over enterprise performance.

"Many large manufacturing companies have multiple software systems such as SAP and Oracle in place to manage and execute various facets of their internal operations," says Timothy Campbell, Steelwedge's CEO. "But, despite these systems, most corporate planning is still done on spreadsheets. The result is that departments end up with individual plans that are often not in sync with trying to achieve the company's overall objectives. Our goal is to give corporations a means to create individual plans, and enable them to synchronize planning through collaborative processes, so that the company ends with a common plan that each person and each department is executing. Once that is accomplished, resources across the company are deployed in an optimal manner, and the common plan allows companies to easily measure and compare the performance of each department against their objectives."

The Steelwedge Enterprise Planning and Performance Management suite contains modules that address sales forecasting, demand planning, revenue and margin planning, product lifecycle planning, and supply planning. It works in conjunction with software systems that are used to manage people, operations, and customer relationships, including SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Siebel, and salesforce.com. With enterprise-enabled Microsoft Excel serving as the user interface, Steelwedge solutions help businesses create a plan of action for their entire organization, and give them a framework for managing their corporate performance.

"If you look at Fortune 2000, Fortune 1000, and even smaller companies, planning on spreadsheets can be tedious and chaotic," Campbell says. "Coordinating this information to accommodate changes in a business plan for a company that has $10 billion in revenue in 50 countries is nearly impossible. Our software helps these companies connect all of the quantitative and qualitative input from their sales, operations, and supply chain functions to create a plan that coordinates their business operations."

Steelwedge works with some of the world's largest, most respected manufacturing and service companies including Air Products and Chemicals, Ciena Corporation, Enterasys Networks, FedEx Freight, Harley Davidson Motor Company, Juniper Networks, Qlogic Corporation, Teledyne Technologies Incorporated and Tellabs.

Steelwedge moved into its Hacienda headquarters in November of 2005. According to Campbell, the company needed a larger space to accommodate its growth and to host customers. The new Steelwedge site houses 23 employees, including its engineering and corporate staff. In addition, the company has a regional sales staff serving key U.S. markets, bringing its workforce to 30 people.

An 8,000 square foot corporate headquarters give Steelwedge plenty of room to house the professionals that will accommodate its impressive growth. "The product categories that we are in, especially in sales forecasting and sales and operations planning, are expanding very quickly," Campbell says. "Our customer base has nearly doubled in the past six to nine months. To support our current and future customers, we'll need to grow quickly to respond to our own market demands and implement our own business plan."

Photo: The Steelwedge Software management team (l to r): Glen Margolis, EVP/founder; Craig Thomas, CTO; Tim Campbell, president and CEO; and Chris Whitted, VP of sales.

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