PLEASANTON, Calif., Oct. 07, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Steelwedge, a provider of cloud-based planning solutions and services that inform better decision-making for global organizations, announced today that Major League Baseball (MLB) executive Billy Beane will be the keynote speaker for its Envision 2015 conference, to be held Oct 18-20 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco.  Beane is the subject of Michael Lewis’ bestselling book “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game” as well as the popular film “Moneyball” starring Brad Pitt.

Beane’s Envision 2015 keynote presentation, “Moneyball: Capturing the ‘What-if’ Advantage to Win” will complement “Planning for the End of Planning: A Changing Model” from Gartner Principal Research Analyst Amber Salley and “Ready or Not: 5 Revolutions that Will Make or Break Your Supply Chain” from Salesforce Chief Enterprise Strategist Bruce Richardson, as well as sessions led by Steelwedge executives, industry visionaries, and Steelwedge customers. Speakers include representatives from Nissan-Europe; HP; Monsanto: OCZ Storage Solutions, a Toshiba Company; Blackhawk Networks; Salesforce; Applied Materials; Southern Wine & Spirits; PricewaterhouseCoopers; Radisys; Republic Wireless; and Stanford University.

Steelwedge CEO Pervinder Johar will open the Oct. 19 session by introducing the theme of Envision 2015: “Impact Planning—The Power of Knowing ‘What if’ in an Uncertain World.”

“Envision 2015 is an opportunity to collaborate with planning leaders from around the world, and to share best practices for informed anticipation and efficient responsiveness.  We call it the ‘readiness ROI,” meaning the value of being proactively prepared to act, using planning strategies that deliver meaningful competitive advantage,” said Johar. “Billy Beane’s ‘Moneyball’ philosophy leverages the same kind of thinking, and has helped shape the way modern businesses view and leverage big data and deploy analytics for planning and long-term success. His insights apply directly to the opportunities and challenges businesses in competitive markets face.”

Considered one of the most progressive and talented baseball executives in baseball today, Beane shattered traditional MLB beliefs that big payrolls equated to wins by implementing a statistical methodology that led the Oakland Athletics, one of the worst teams in baseball with one of the lowest payrolls, to six American League West Division Titles after Beane took over as General Manager in 1997. The Oakland Athletics recently announced that the organization has promoted Beane to Executive Vice President of Baseball Operations.

Steelwedge is the recognized industry leader in transforming multi-source, diverse data into clear, targeted results that boost company plan performance. Steelwedge understands that each planner in an enterprise has considerations unique to a functional area—whether sales planning, product planning, supply planning, demand planning, revenue & margin planning or Sales & Operations Planning. Steelwedge integrates diverse perspectives into Integrated Business Planning, sharpening the effectiveness of functional area plans while factoring exponential benefits into a company’s full scale enterprise plan.

Gartner categorized Steelwedge as a leader in its 2015 Magic Quadrant for Sales & Operations Planning System of Differentiation. To view a copy of the report, go to 2015 Magic Quadrant for Sales & Operations Planning System of Differentiation.

Register here for Envision 2015, held Oct 18-20 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco.

About Steelwedge

Organizations use Steelwedge’s cloud planning platform and services to align sales, demand, supply, strategy, operations and financial decisions across roles, geographies, products, time horizons, channels, customers and suppliers to improve efficiency and outcomes. The company’s action-ready planning platform combines both predictive and responsive technology to equip organizations to be ready to act in time with opportunity, especially in highly competitive markets where continuous forecasting is essential and efficiently responding to changing conditions is advantageous. Named a leader in the Gartner 2015 Sales and Operations Planning Magic Quadrant, Steelwedge is headquartered in Pleasanton, California. 
Visit www.steelwedge.com.

CONTACT: Media Inquiries:

Will Haraway
[email protected]
404.593.8320