What comes to mind when you hear "transportation costs"? For many, the immediate thought will be "carrier rates". It's a valid response, but, unfortunately, it is also one that can reveal a limited point of view about the best way to manage those costs.

How close is Amazon to same-day delivery for most U.S. customers? Maybe not as close as we thought. While a report in May said that by the end of 2013 Amazon will have a distribution center within five miles of most major U.S. cities, a new calculation by supply-chain consultant Marc Wulfraat suggests Amazon has a lot farther to go before it can even reach 20 percent of U.S. shoppers.

Challenge: A large industrial & manufacturing organization that delivers goods and services to the U.S. Department of Energy was looking to unify a collection of de-centralized procurement processes & systems spread across 26 facilities, each using a different process, supplier community and back-end system - including Ariba, PeopleSoft/Oracle, and SAP. The organization needed to gracefully tie these systems together in order to streamline supplier data management, consolidate supplier rates for goods and services and maximize savings.

Navarre Corp., provider of a multichannel platform of electronic commerce and distribution services, has changed its name to Speed Commerce Inc.

Kelly Thomas, group vice president of global accounts with JDA Software, offers a definition of "omni-channel," and discusses how the concept is transforming retail supply chains.

Northgate Public Services, which has a track record in delivering IT solutions to central Government departments, has been appointed by the Department for Transport (DfT) to develop and operate the foreign operator payment system for the forthcoming heavy goods vehicle (HGV) road user levy.

CombineNet Inc. has added features to CombineNet ASAP, its application for electronic sourcing and procurement.