Steelwedge Software Absolutely, Positively Improves FedEx Freight Sales Planning, Bottom Line
Steelwedge Deployed as an On-Demand Solution

PLEASANTON, CA--Jul 25, 2005 -- Steelwedge Software, the leader in Enterprise Planning and Performance Management (EPPM) solutions, today announced that FedEx Freight (NYSE:FDX - News), the leading U.S. provider of next-day and second-day less-than-truckload (LTL) freight services, is successfully using its EPPM solution for enterprise sales forecasting. The solution is currently deployed in an on-demand model.

With more than 350,000 active accounts and 4.5 million freight bills annually, FedEx Freight needed a robust yet flexible consensus-based sales forecasting engine to power enterprise demand planning. Their in-house forecasting tool provided a means for district managers and sales leadership to review historical revenue, number of shipments, and tonnage at the customer center, territory and national levels and use that information to manually create sales forecasts.

The system, however, did not provide a statistically rigorous method of producing forecasts. Further, FedEx Freight accounts are continually realigned and shifted between customer centers and territories, and the in-house tool did not automatically reflect these changes. As a result, ongoing manual adjustments were needed, causing confusion. Finally, strategic forecasts differentiated by product type were not available, so long-term equipment purchasing and support equipment decisions could not be made easily.

Steelwedge advocated a collaborative planning system and determined that the solution to the realignment problem was to forecast at the account level. This permitted moving the forecast (including qualitative adjustments) with the history when realigning customer centers and territories. The solution also forecasts active accounts individually, and groups inactive accounts by their customer center to provide maximum planning flexibility and detail. As a result, the time required to develop a final sales plan is significantly reduced and forecast accuracy improved. In addition, participation in the planning process has increased, leading to greater buy-in and support of sales plans from the field. By deploying the solution as a Steelwedge On-Demand service, FedEx Freight was able to deploy the solution quickly and cost-effectively.

"We are very excited to see FedEx Freight leveraging our collaborative sales forecasting capabilities in an on-demand model to improve their overall planning process," said Steelwedge CEO Timothy Campbell. "The solution manages more than 30 million forecasts and highlights the scalability of Steelwedge architecture for Fortune 500 environments."

About Steelwedge

Steelwedge Software, Inc. is the leading innovator in the emerging field of Enterprise Planning and Performance Management (EPPM), helping manufacturing and service companies create, validate and synchronize functional plans, as well as actively aligning them with business and financial targets to gain executive visibility and control over enterprise performance. Leading customers include Air Products, Enterasys, Tellabs and FedEx. Founded in 2000, Steelwedge Software is located in Pleasanton, California. For more information, please visit www.steelwedge.com.

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.