Steelwedge(R) Launches SalesSight(TM) Forecasting App for Salesforce(R) to Speed Sales Team Participation in Collaborative Planning

PLEASANTON, Ca., and PHOENIX, May 12, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Getting sales teams to reliably participate in account planning and forecasting is the key to building a “no surprises” discipline in collaborative planning.   However, many sales people resist adopting time-consuming planning tools that interrupt the normal flow of their day. 

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/f7e5c716-8064-4af0-92b5-f48b08822019

Today, Steelwedge has launched an answer to that resistance with its SalesSight forecasting app. Debuting at the Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference in Phoenix May 12 – 14, SalesSight is available with a single click from within in Salesforce, the market leading Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution.  That means sales people can update forecasts, view account status and expectations across various time periods, and model the impact of potential changes without exiting Salesforce.

SalesSight combines powerful forecasting capabilities with a user-friendly design that enables sales people to view actuals and forecasts at different levels of aggregation. Value can be “rolled up” by customer, by region, by product family or other levels based on planning hierarchies. SalesSight then aggregates forecasts across levels using sound business logic, offloading the “heavy lifting” from sales teams.

Because SalesSight makes forecasting naturally accessible as a sales person works opportunities in Salesforce, the likelihood of broad participation is heightened.  SalesSight makes it easy for sales teams to deliver forecasts further into the future; specify which customers will purchase which products in what regions, in which quantities; and pinpoint the timing of customer purchases more accurately.

“The most accurate plans consider past sales (using statistical forecasting), current consensus (using formal cross-functional collaboration), and current confidence and sentiment on the active pipeline from sales teams on the front-line,” said Glenn Jones, executive vice president, product strategy for Steelwedge.  “However, sales teams typically argue that they don’t have time to provide highly detailed forecasts because they have to focus on selling.  SalesSight makes forecasting a natural part of a sales day, and delivers real-time value to sales teams as well as to the broader organization,” he added.

SalesSight was built on Force.com^®, a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering from Salesforce that enables developers to create add-on applications that integrate into the main Salesforce application.  Force.com applications are hosted on Salesforce's infrastructure, and are available through the Salesforce1 AppExchange, the world’s leading business apps marketplace.

Jones added, “Apps such as Steelwedge’s SalesSight help to foster meaningful collaboration between sales and the rest of the enterprise that needs to know what sales knows in order to make the best decisions. Force.com provides a mechanism for innovators to create apps that extend Salesforce’s impact in improving performance.”

SalesSight App Complements the Steelwedge Sales Pipeline Bridge^TM

SalesSight complements Steelwedge’s Sales Pipeline Bridge, which links Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) processes in Steelwedge to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems and CRM systems, including Salesforce, and then intelligently filters sales opportunity data into a view that is meaningful to finance, product management and operations.

Then, companies can align sales-pipeline-based and demand-history-based forecasts, and quickly respond to changing market conditions and improve revenue predictability. Additionally, companies can:

• Give their demand planning and operations organizations early insight into large opportunities supporting more efficient supply planning
• Capture a snapshot of sales plans providing a baseline for comparison as plans evolve.
• Incorporate multiple business rules to automatically clean, filter and adjust sales pipeline data
• Use statistical and regression-based techniques to distinguish true changes in demand signals from pipeline ˝noise˝Compare different information sources on an equal basis and conduct gap analysis between pipeline-based projections and demand data
• View detailed pipeline data from various perspectives and levels of aggregation
• Analyze and edit pipeline data from any perspective
• Reconcile pipeline-based forecast data with order history, causal data and other data sources
• Adjust pipeline opportunity data for forecasting purposes
• Highlight demand changes and missed actions according to your business rules
• Create integrated email notifications, tasks and calendar entries
• Leverage user-definable sales opportunity dashboard and reports with embedded email delivery
• Achieve seamless visibility for performance measurement and analysis
• Archive automatically all changes to sales pipeline data
• Access to real-time actuals for reporting and integration complimenting the Salesforce plan
• Act as the Plan of Record showing users a historical view of all plan changes and deviations
• Link run rate with deals with the baseline plan by region
• Link and translate high level opportunities into planning information

Attendees at the Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference, for which Steelwedge is a Platinum sponsor, can see SalesSight and the Sales Pipeline Bridge at booth #105. Gartner categorized Steelwedge as a leader in the April 19, 2015 Magic Quadrant for Supply Chain Planning System of Differentiation. To view a copy of the report, go to: Gartner 2015 Magic Quadrant for Sales and Operations Planning System of Differentiation*

About the Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference

The Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference is the world's most important gathering of supply chain leaders and takes place in North America and Europe. The event features analysts specializing in all supply chain disciplines and offers an unrivaled resource for chief supply chain officers and their supply chain leadership teams when it comes to advice and expertise, and a platform for the informed and provocative debate that is essential to raising the bar on supply chain performance. For more information go to - http://www.gartner.com/technology/summits/na/supply-chain/

About the Magic Quadrant 

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Steelwedge

The Steelwedge Collaborative Planning Cloud enables leading companies to profitably align demand, supply, strategy, operations and financial goals. Connecting people, processes and technology, Steelwedge helps leading brands such as HP, Lenovo, Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan and Monsanto to optimize planning to improve performance across every role to make outcomes more predictable,  mitigate risk, and profitably navigate market changes. Steelwedge’s planning solutions provide real-time decision making tools through rich analytics and powerful “what-if” scenario modeling. Visit www.steelwedge.com.

*Gartner, Inc., Magic Quadrant for Sales and Operations Planning Systems of Differentiation, Tim Payne, April 29, 2015