Trevor Miles, vice president of thought leadership with Kinaxis, details industry's major supply-chain management challenges - in particular, the difficulty of obtaining full visibility of supply and demand, and dealing with the volatility of markets.

Until recently, projects were largely initiated by and implemented for IT departments, rather than business, and the focus was primarily on eliminating silos and moving from departmental to enterprise programs. That focus has shifted and the shift has led to a $14bn global market for business intelligence software in 2013"”one expected to eclipse $17bn by 2016, according to Gartner Group estimates.

Findings of a recent survey show a healthy growth in online holiday shopping in the main Eurozone markets, but a slowdown in overall UK online sales in the run-up to Christmas 2013.

While the press and many companies continue to marvel at the sheer volume of data being generated and captured in the internet era, forward-leaning corporations have already recognized that big data's transformative potential to generate value in both the digital and physical realms will go largely unrealized unless it's complemented by speed. Fast data can unlock the value-creating power of big (and small) data.