Analyst Insight: Today's strategies for managing suppliers are incomplete. Too much emphasis has been placed on using power to gain leverage over suppliers. But this strategy doesn't work in every situation and care has to be taken to architect the right kind of relationship. Power stymies the development of truly collaborative and strategic relationships. These relationships can produce outcomes well beyond what one firm can do by itself. - Karl B. Manrodt, Professor of Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Georgia College & State University

Analyst Insight: In 2015, I predicted that the healthcare industry was finally sharpening its focus on profitability and efficiency. While I was writing this Walgreens moved on Rite-Aid and further consolidated the retail pharmacy market, but more importantly strengthened their negotiating leverage on price breaks. If the cost of the supply chain from sourcing to production to distribution was not a priority, it just became critical to profit margins and customer service. - Brian Hudock, Partner, Tompkins International

Analyst Insight: As technology platforms become more sophisticated, affordable, secure and widespread, they are poised to become useful tools in spurring collaboration along the supply chain. In fact, when coupled with collaborative buyer-supplier agreements, it could become a primary factor that makes collaboration a reality instead of just an aspiration. - Kate Vitasek, faculty member of the University of Tennessee's College of Business Administration

CBX Software, a provider of sourcing-management applications to the retail industry, has joined with SGS, the global inspection, testing and verification body, to provide an integrated sourcing, quality, compliance and supply-chain service.

Are consumers really willing to pay more for a product that's environmentally sustainable and socially responsible? Depends on whom you ask.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Coca-Cola Co. and 73 other companies that together buy more than $2tr of goods and services are unprepared for climate shocks because suppliers are ignoring requests for data on their exposure to rising temperatures and climate regulation.

They call it "free" trade, but the price of failing to properly manage one's imports and exports can be dangerously high.

What's the biggest risk to global supply chains today? Natural disasters? Terrorism? Supplier failure? Port strikes? How about ignorance?