Analyst Insight: Combining supply chain analysis and consulting topics is more logical than you think. Best practice/market leading companies regularly use outside consultants. When you look at the roll of consultants' clients, it includes all the leading companies. Leaders know that to innovate, they have to 'break the rules" - extending beyond status quo. They know that analyzing and improving supply chain process performance requires full-time commitment and expertise - to look at processes from the outside in.

D&B announced the launch of its monthly U.S Economic Health Tracker, which provides a multidimensional perspective on the U.S. economy, with insights across key sectors of the U.S. economy, including small business health, total job growth, and overall U.S. business health.

Some random themes and thoughts to emerge from Oracle Corp.'s Value Chain Summit in San Jose, Calif. last week:

Big data is the all the rage and getting tons of press as it has allowed manufacturers and supply chain executives to create new and compelling data-driven strategies that help them compete, innovate and capture wallet-share. Perhaps fueled in part by the likes of leading database vendors or system integrators (SIs) looking to cash in on high-dollar predictive analytic and scoring engagements, big data represents many things to many people, but one of the most pragmatic applications is mastering all the data elements used in a business infrastructure. The term commonly used for this process is master data management, or MDM.

Consumers remain smitten by luxury. Their urge to splurge was revealed in a 2013 study by The Boston Consulting Group, which found that consumers spent an annual aggregate amount of more than $1.8tr worldwide on items the respondents defined as luxuries.