Collaboration has been an alluring concept in the world of supply chain for years, but many have found that pilots often fail to expand beyond the honeymoon phase. Part of the problem may be trust gaps at the senior executive level that are worse than at lower managerial levels. This is not irrational, but reflects the fact that top executives see a struggle over jointly created value that is less obvious further down the organisation. - Kevin O'Marah, Chief Content Officer and Head of Research, SCM World

Analyst Insight: For both B2C and B2B, cloud technology is nothing new, but for supply chains the adoption has assumed a more guarded pace. That is to be expected: supply chain professionals are accustomed to operating in a world built on legacy applications and bolt-on point solutions. The promise of the cloud had been elusive, but supply chain systems are beginning to take advantage of the business model changes afforded by cloud solutions. - Guy F. Courtin, Vice President, Research, SCM World

SupplyChainBrain and JobsInLogistics have joined forces in 2014 for the specialized purpose of:

Analyst Insight: Both the public and private sectors in China are taking bold steps to respond to challenges of the new consumption-driven economy. Government measures, though stuck at a policy level in many cases, are addressing the right issues. At the same time, domestic companies are rising up to meet new demands. In 2014, China will see big changes in its core logistics and manufacturing industries. Some of the top areas seeing change include domestic transportation, distribution, import and export, as well as sourcing. - Jim Serstad, Managing Director Asia, Tompkins International

Analyst Insight: Complex executive priorities and deeply embedded functional tendencies present challenging organizational dynamics to the chemical supply chain leader. These challenges require a combination of operational effectiveness and leadership vision and influence to establish a hierarchy of layered and synchronized governance processes that connect differentiated execution to segmented demand fulfillment strategies. Features of this integrated capability will include supply and demand visibility with analytics that support agile decision making to manage and mitigate complex constraints. - Paul Lord, Research Director, Gartner

Analyst Insight: If the wheels on your vehicle are out of alignment, you're in for a rough and inefficient ride. The same holds true for businesses. Alignment, especially in strategic relationships, gets businesses beyond the initial "yes" that sets a deal in motion"”it aligns the participants throughout the life of the deal, turning it into a smooth and powerful relationship. - Kate Vitasek, Faculty, University of Tennessee's Center for Executive Education, and Founder, Supply Chain Visions

Analyst Insight: Theoretically, supply chain transformations deliver a different set of capabilities and outcomes that customers recognize. The reality is that a transformation may simply be a radical or rapid change to the supply chain organization and operations in response to changes in the marketplace. It could be a dramatic reduction in cost or improvement in service to remain competitive. In other words, the outcomes are not necessarily different, just better than the prior state. - Michael Dominy, Research Director, Gartner

The last year has seen much change in the enterprise business process management software market. The U.S. BPM market for 2013 amounted to $65bn and is expected to grow to more than $77bn by 2017. Certain verticals are poised to surpass the expected CAGR of 4.3 percent of market growth. Organizations focusing on BPM will see the largest impacts, as many inefficiencies can be fixed, if done correctly. - Dylan Persaud, Managing Director, Eval-Source