Carriers are becoming increasingly anxious about finding good drivers. Good drivers want to know why, in a time of shortage, they are not being rewarded better. And shippers are keeping their fingers crossed, hoping trucks will continue to be readily available - and affordable.

The smart home appliance market, defined by products with built-in connectivity, will witness substantial growth over the next five years, reaching nearly $25bn by 2018, according to ABI Research. Currently limited to the top-end luxury models, wireless connectivity will slowly permeate to lower tier brands and models.

Recent research shows 80 percent of the consumer goods companies surveyed have a formal sales and operations planning (S&OP) process in place, yet more than half rely on spreadsheets while another 26 percent stated they either utilize a homegrown solution or their ERP system.

Time-critical decisions in transportation, risk management, security, disaster response, manufacturing, and other operational domains require continuous real-time situational awareness and intelligence. Most enterprise systems do not provide this today.

New implementation guidelines for leveraging GS1 standards in apparel and general merchandise ecommerce have been released by GS1 US. The Voluntary Guidelines for Exchanging Extended Attributes for eCommerce were developed in collaboration with more than 15 retailers, vendors and solution providers participating in the GS1 US Apparel and General Merchandise Initiative and are available at www.gs1us.org/eCommerceExtendedAttributes.