There's been a great myth sweeping across the world of procurement. It's come about as procurement technology has grown widespread and companies are vying for customers to sign onto their solutions. The myth takes the form of an eraser, scrubbing away the lines between direct and indirect procurement.

The world of e-commerce deliveries is fraught with peril. Will Leong, chief operating officer of TZ, talks about how providers are surmounting the various challenges.

Challenge: A national retail chain wanted to work with fewer, strategically chosen 3PL partners. For a busy cross-dock facility, the company transitioned the business to Kane Is Able (KANE), which also operates cross docks for the retailer in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Hampshire, and Ohio.

Heavyweight orders require another level of delivery service, to satisfy the demands of buyers. Jim Hourigan, chief operating officer with BuildDirect, discusses some of the challenges that are unique to that sector.

As if domestic delivery weren't tough enough, cross-border shipments entail a whole new set of challenges. Jonathan Matchett, operations director with wnDirect, talks about how service providers are addressing issues of speed, reliability and regulations.

FusionOps, a vendor of cloud-based supply-chain analytics applications, has developed FusionOps Retail.

JDA Software Group Inc. is teaming with Google to offer its cloud-based supply-chain applications for the omnichannel via the Google Cloud Platform.