Gaining deep visibility into sales channels and a timely understanding of every detail about product shipments is essential to modern businesses. Granular knowledge – about what items were sold, who sold them, who bought them, where they are now, and whether they’re being returned – gives manufacturers an edge in optimizing the final mile of the supply chain. That information is known as channel data, and the tools used to gather and manage that data are known as channel data management systems, or CDM.

The global logistics and shipping industry's top technology priority is improving supply chain visibility capabilities to integrate higher quality data, according to a survey conducted for INTTRA, the multi-carrier e-commerce network for ocean shipping.

B2M Solutions has developed Elemez, cloud-based software offering mobile-device manufacturers and managed service providers a real-time view of key business and technology analytics.

There will be over 20 million devices designed to automatically relay information over the internet by 2022, according to Machina Research. For most of these "things," traditional wireless internet networks will be a pretty poor choice.

Rich Sherman says the Internet of Things will combine with Web 3.0 technology to create what he calls "Smart Supply Network 3.0." Sherman shares his vision of how this evolution will change the supply chain for the better.