The TrueCommerce EDI (electronic data interchange) Solutions Group of HighJump Software has partnered with NumberCruncher.com, a vendor of inventory and order-management software for QuickBooks users.

Analyst Insight: The need for speed, along with margin pressures, is causing food and beverage distributors to look for ways to achieve greater efficiencies in the warehouse. The continued growth of the "long tail" that are slow movers combined with a scarcity of available labor and the complexity of route-stop sequencing makes automation a good option. But to justify investments you have to look beyond the labor savings alone. – Frank Jewell, Food and Beverage Industry Leader, Fortna Inc.

Analyst Insight: Now that ERP for cloud has crossed the chasm, organizations have a multitude of choices to select the correct software to run their business. New vendors are rapidly emerging in the ERP cloud market. This is especially so within the the SMB market. Vertical specific solutions will disorient organizations by providing too much choice and unnecessarily increase selection time-lines. – Dylan Persaud, Managing Director, Eval-Source

It's easy for tech-savvy executives to get excited about Big Data and advanced analytics these days. Newly available tools allow companies to do things they couldn't do before, like recommending specific products to online buyers or mining workers' compensation claims data to recommend better treatment options for injured employees. But whiz-bang capabilities don't create real value unless an organization incorporates these new techniques into its day-to-day operations.

Analyst Insight: While e-commerce is buzzing, it's still only 6 percent of total U.S. retail spend. For CPG companies, the Online Search to Offline Purchase (O2O) market (30 percent to 40 percent of retail spend) growth is driven by mobile commerce. Some 74 percent of smartphone owners use their device while shopping with 79 percent ultimately making a purchase as a result, according to Retailigence. As the "moment of truth" shifts to the "point of demand", more information is available to support supply chain decisions. – Rich Sherman, author and founder at Gold & Domas Research

Analyst Insight: The greatest gap between performance and satisfaction of supply chain applications is in the area of demand planning. The reasons are many, but many are rooted in organizational and processes issues causing many people to throw in the towel too early. – Lora Cecere, Founder of Supply Chain Insights

Analyst Insight: Consumer products companies are making far greater use of alternative sales channels than ever before. They are proactively reaching out to customers, whether in B2B or B2C environments, to gain share of mind and increase sales. Consumer products companies have also become much more active using their own websites and utilizing marketplaces as a means to increase their product's visibility and availability to potential customers. – Bruce Tompkins, Executive Director, Tompkins Supply Chain Consortium

Analyst Insight: The market's understanding of cloud solutions is maturing. We are steadily - and correctly - moving away from what the cloud is to focus on what it can mean for our businesses. For many, what it means now is an opportunity to reduce capital expenditures and free up IT resources. This will change as we look less at whether cloud solutions can do the same things as on-premises and focus on what they can do differently. - Scott Pezza, Principal Analyst at Blue Hill Research

Analyst Insight: Business process management has changed immensely within the last few years. Last year, many new vendors emerged in all industries and verticals due to SaaS business models. The BPM market is rapidly evolving to include a combination of products services and software bundled into one deliverable in a turnkey solution. As the race to zero continues, vendors will have to discover what customers are willing to pay for. – Dylan Persaud, Managing Director, Eval-Source

Cheaper, better robots will replace human workers in the world's factories at a faster pace over the next decade, pushing labor costs down 16 percent, according to the Boston Consulting Group.