Analyst Insight: While 95 percent of consumer products companies talk about building the end-to-end supply chain extending from the customer's customer to the supplier's supplier, most of it today is only lip service. Why? The processes that made the CP company strong are the very same processes that need to change to drive growth, improve supply chain resiliency and power market share. - Lora Cecere, partner, Altimeter Group

Analyst Insight: In recent years, an increasing number of organizations have sought to make their supply chains more environmentally friendly. According to APQC's Open Standards Benchmarking in procurement, 48 percent of organizations initiated "green" procurement policies as of fall 2011. As organizations feel more pressure to monitor their environmental impact, they must consider the potential effect of enacting green procurement policies on their bottom line. - Becky Partida, knowledge specialist, APQC

Analyst Insight: The rapidly changing business environment has caused software evaluation to evolve, and organizations that do not realize those shifts will be left with inadequate solutions and an increased chance of IT failure. These new trends have complicated an already difficult software evaluation process due to cloud, SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, SOA and Web 2.0 technologies. - Keean Persaud, managing director, Eval-Source

Analyst Insight: Though there is no question that modern business process management (BPM) applications have the potential to solve many technical aspects of business processes challenges, the productive consolidation and integration of this evolution into the corporate culture requires that the management of business processes shift toward an approach that is data-driven, widely supported, and better communicated at the organizational level. - Jorge García, research analyst, Technology Evaluation Centers

Analyst Insight: Consumer packaged goods manufacturers are being squeezed by trends in customer purchasing and technology, coupled with pricing pressures, higher input costs, and fluctuating commodity prices. In today's market, CPG companies have to integrate and collaborate with trading partners and better manage retail shelf space. Growing recognition that failure to innovate will result in poor performance, acquisition, or worse, is driving leading CPG companies to transform their operating models. - Ben Pivar, vice president, Supply Chain Technologies Practice, Capgemini North America Applications Services

Analyst Insight: Shippers have made great advances in transportation management in the last decade by centralizing procurement and transportation planning organizations, as well as investing in TMS. The question now is: What's the next big thing? As the use of supply chain technology and information sharing grows, there is an increase in the meaningful use of information and integrating transportation with other functions. These areas have already demonstrated significant benefits for pioneering shippers and are clearly breakthroughs in transportation management. - Bill Loftis, principal, Tompkins International