As the volume of business-to-business purchases being made online continues to grow, B2B suppliers are responding by expanding their e-commerce platforms and overall omnichannel capabilities, according to new research from Accenture and hybris software, an SAP company.

As the globalization, expansion and growing interconnectivity of supply chains make them more complex, businesses and their suppliers are faced with new challenges, with new opportunities for growth. Many top companies invest a vast amount of resources in innovation. This commitment to innovation drives growth as they compete to remain top manufacturers and service providers. However, many of these top companies are not reaching their full potential. Their businesses are innovating, growing, and developing, but many of their suppliers are not.

Forty-six percent of leading companies report achieving more than four percent post-contract financial benefits from better supplier relationship management, according to research conducted by State of Flux. The research is in its sixth year and includes responses from more than 500 global companies across more than 20 industry sectors.

The debut of the iPhone 6 wasn't just a big moment for Apple. It marked a major event for manufacturers in Taiwan and elsewhere in Asia that make the components for the device.

Small business vendors that frequently have to chase down larger clients to get paid might have reason to rejoice. According to a story in The Wall Street Journal, the White House has launched an initiative that will either speed payments to small suppliers or help them access "lower-cost capital."

You don't have to look too far, or listen too intently, to detect signs of digital disruption these days. We're in the midst of a veritable eruption of disruption, taking place across the business landscape and radically reshaping everything from customer interactions to internal processes to extended supply chains. Needless to say, it's far better to be the disrupter than one of the rudely disrupted.

The rise of global sourcing as a means to minimize costs has had the unintended consequence of increasing risk. Dependence on an increasing number of suppliers makes it difficult to monitor their performance without automated metrics. According to a 2013 Supply Chain Resilience Survey, 75 percent of organizations experienced at least one supply chain disruption incident in the past year.

As a supply chain manager, you can build and deploy the best supplier collaboration system available, but if your vendors are not onboard, it's about as useful as an empty warehouse. The success of your collaboration project is directly tied to supplier willingness to use the system.