Analyst Insight: The economy and reductions in demand have focused priority on tactical initiatives within the supply chain. In 2010 there will be renewed focus beyond securing distribution efficiencies and renegotiating transportation rates (2009's top actions). As we exit the recession, companies are encouraged to embrace a 4-step strategy for transformational change.

Analyst Insight: Today's transportation organizations are being affected on all sides by rising costs and demands. Top performers in this economy are extending beyond the basics of domestic and international systems and beginning to create and extend automated processes to address advanced capabilities like dynamic optimization and the daily use of analytic tools to monitor events and communicate and collaborate on a near real-time basis.

Analyst Insight: The dirty underside of supply chain is confronting the many risks inherent in 24x7-operations entrusted to "partners" in far-flung regions who are conducting fraudulent activities as well as dealing with unpredictable events. The big market here is risk transfer-insurance and others services to mitigate the impact of events. In addition, step by step, we are beginning to see approaches-metric and risk assessments methods, auditing and monitoring services, and technology - to support risk avoidance and assure recovery.

Analyst Insight: The number one strategy for sourcing and procurement executives is taking costs out. But that requires an enterprise view of procurement and sourcing resources, including spend, business process, supplier contracts, organizational structure, and employees. Leading organizations have accelerated their strategic cost-reduction activities to ensure immediate sourcing and procurement ROI.

Analyst Insight: Many businesses have been paying more attention to the concept of software as a service (SaaS) and how it can be incorporated into their IT portfolios. The most commonly stated benefits -rapid deployment, lower cost, and scalability - must be balanced by other key decision criterion, such as fit, ROI, and risk.

Analyst Insight: Ideally, the output of the S&OP plan should drive companies' income statement and balance sheets. Companies should create internal projects and SWAT teams wherein the S&OP plan is mapped to the key financial documents with collaboration between finance and supply chain.

Analyst Insight: Leading companies have a portfolio of true end-to-end supply chain metrics, use those metrics in key processes such as S&OP, supplement the metrics with customer and supplier dashboards, and have an open attitude and metrics culture that drives them through an upward spiral of increasingly higher levels of performance. Most importantly: they understand they cannot be good at everything, and they consciously manage tradeoffs.

Analyst Insight: Today's supply chain managers operate in a distributed, networked environment, where multi-tier process visibility and effective partner collaboration are critical to success. In order to successfully balance the risks and rewards of this new environment, companies need to have much more transparent and responsive supply chains than in the past.

Analyst Insight: 2009 painfully taught organizations the value of having a flexible, modular, agile supply chain - from planning through to execution. Companies learned that being prepared for uncertainty with the right people, processes and technology can be the key to business survival. CPG companies that have maintained and developed their talent, redefined their processes and strengthened their supply chain capabilities can look forward to a rewarding, yet challenging, 2010.