Never mind those expert consultancies and handsomely compensated analysts who purport to tell us the future of supply-chain management. The real answers can be found in an event that's held once a year in the heart of Silicon Valley. With dinner thrown in as well.

Winning the game in demand management is a yard-by-yard gain. There may be some super long passes and some genius calls, but by and large, making progress requires granular visibility of the market, and software that can understand the data and, like a great quarterback, call the shots in a timely way.

One of the new buzzwords in the demand planning arena is demand sensing. Developed around 2003, demand sensing has slowly been grabbing the interest of the CPG, energy, food, beverage, and chemical industries. Often viewed as an alternative to demand management, demand sensing is anything but. Let's compare the two.

North American supply chains became more complex in 2012 as the economy continued to recover. Rapid innovation, higher seasonal sales and increased reliance on promotions contributed to make forecasting more challenging. These and other findings are contained in the Terra Technology Forecasting Benchmark Study, now in its fourth year.

Surrounded by an explosion of data, most forecasting systems have no way to leverage or take advantage of it.