Analyst Insight: It's no secret that the explosion of e-commerce, omnichannel, multichannel and social media - along with large online retailers' offerings - have significantly raised customers' expectations for rapid delivery, free shipping and free returns. Customers are clearly signaling that a company's successes and failures rest on high expectations of price, selection, convenience and experience. Companies must "get local" in order to meet customers' demands for speed of delivery. – John Spain, Partner, Tompkins International

Analyst Insight: Supply chain complexity and turmoil is on the rise due to growing global markets, increasing customer expectations, rising costs and more intense competitive pressures. Progressive companies understand that supply chain performance has a significant impact on the bottom line and shareholder value, and they must reinvent their supply chain networks on a regular basis in order to remain competitive. However, the traditional way of designing supply chain networks with a focus on cost optimization is giving way to more progressive thinking. - John Spain, Executive Vice President, Tompkins International

Analyst Insight: Network planning suffers from an abundance of inappropriate technology, coupled with far too little pragmatic, common sense. Everyone is familiar with the optimization tools that are routinely applied; all are based on long-term shipment forecasts by SKU, by zip code or even finer measurement. Now wait a minute! We can't even forecast next month's demand; how in the world can we forecast demand detail five years in the future? The skills and skepticism of the millennials just may have the solution. - Robert Sabath, Principal Essentialist SCM, Trissential