Analyst Insight: If the wheels on your vehicle are out of alignment, you're in for a rough and inefficient ride. The same holds true for businesses. Alignment, especially in strategic relationships, gets businesses beyond the initial "yes" that sets a deal in motion"”it aligns the participants throughout the life of the deal, turning it into a smooth and powerful relationship. - Kate Vitasek, Faculty, University of Tennessee's Center for Executive Education, and Founder, Supply Chain Visions

Analyst Insight: Theoretically, supply chain transformations deliver a different set of capabilities and outcomes that customers recognize. The reality is that a transformation may simply be a radical or rapid change to the supply chain organization and operations in response to changes in the marketplace. It could be a dramatic reduction in cost or improvement in service to remain competitive. In other words, the outcomes are not necessarily different, just better than the prior state. - Michael Dominy, Research Director, Gartner

The last year has seen much change in the enterprise business process management software market. The U.S. BPM market for 2013 amounted to $65bn and is expected to grow to more than $77bn by 2017. Certain verticals are poised to surpass the expected CAGR of 4.3 percent of market growth. Organizations focusing on BPM will see the largest impacts, as many inefficiencies can be fixed, if done correctly. - Dylan Persaud, Managing Director, Eval-Source

Analyst Insight: Continuous industry, business and customer demands force companies to maintain business processes in permanent evolution. Highly productive organizations strive to achieve a technological edge, business efficiency, and regulatory compliance, which must be assimilated within the organization's operations, to increase and optimize business performance. - Jorge Garcia, Senior Analyst, Technology Evaluation Centers

Analyst Insight: When it comes to supply chain management, "Big Data" has generated more in the way of buzz than it has real benefit. Awash in a rising sea of data, companies still struggle to use it to make better decisions. - Brad Householder, Principal, PwC's Advisory practice; Anand Rao, Principal, PwC's Financial Services Advisory practice; Syed Mukhtar, Director, PwC's Operations practice

The U.S. has seen a substantial portion of its manufacturing base eroded by cheap overseas production. American workers blame free trade. So why should we speed up the process?