Even as North America is getting up to speed economically, a cyclical slowdown in emerging markets is squelching the prospects for significant advances in the global airfreight market, according to the Airports Council International half-year report. The council also predicted limited global growth for the remainder of 2015. Airfreight volume worldwide grew in June at 2.1 percent, year-over-year, with domestic traffic increasing 4.8 percent, yet international freight volume only increased 0.9 percent.

Many ERP customers, with their installations getting long in the tooth, are considering canceling their vendor maintenance agreements, some of which can run into the millions or tens of millions of dollars.

Having undergone a raft of acquisitions and name changes over the years, the pharmaceutical giant formerly known as Actavis scraps its legacy manual processes and embraces formal demand-planning and advanced-scheduling technology.

The North American robotics market is off to its fastest start ever in 2015, according to statistics released from Robotic Industries Association (RIA), the industry's trade group.

Small to mid-sized companies are better positioned than large corporations to take advantage of cloud-based solutions because they have not made big investments in enterprise systems, says Yogesh Pathak of Technoforte. The supply chain is one of many areas where cloud solutions promise to change the game, Pathak says.

When Esquire Express got into the same-day delivery market 25 years ago, it primarily moved documents for law firms, says President Steve Howard. The internet killed that business, but it also created a new market in same-day delivery of tangible goods. Esquire has thrived by partnering with 3PLs and their retail clients to deliver the same day.