Reading some media reports, you might believe that the retail industry is in serious decline. But all is not as it seems.

In 2013, Michael Dell shocked the world by taking his namesake computer company private in the largest leveraged buyout since the Great Depression. He shocked it again in 2015 when he announced that the Texas company would merge with Massachusetts’ EMC, another tech industry stalwart, in one of the biggest deals in business, worth $67.7bn.

Supply chains are under tremendous pressure to perform better. The average consumer now spends considerable time researching the best prices for the products they want, they’re comfortable ordering online, and they expect swift delivery at a time that suits them.

With the emergence of new digital technologies such as Mobility, Big Data, Cloud, Business Intelligence/AI, the IoT, etc., new and more abundant sources of data are available to improve forecasting and demand management. Companies that embrace digital and transform their demand management processes will gain significant competitive advantage. While the traditional statistical forecast may serve a baseline, demand analyses must extend across functions (silos) and include many different sources of causal data. -Rich Sherman, Senior Fellow, Supply Chain Centre of Excellence, Tata Consultancy Services

As companies digitize and integrate their enterprise and implement advanced analytics, they are learning that collaboration is the key to market leadership. Collaborative channel relationships are transforming the buyer-seller relationship from transactional to strategic. Working together to integrate and share process information, partners experience performance improvement by focusing on the least landed cost at every point in the channel versus leveraging price. Regulatory compliance for track, trace and authentication can only be realized through digitization. -Rich Sherman, Senior Fellow, Supply Chain Centre of Excellence, Tata Consultancy Services