By now, all manufacturers are fully up to speed on the Securities & Exchange Commission's new rule about disclosing the presence of conflict minerals in their products ... aren't they?

As the global economy picks up, working capital optimization will continue to be a high priority for corporate treasurers in 2015. In their drive for competitive advantage, treasurers are increasingly looking beyond the traditional forms of finance to explore a wider range of alternative funding options that support their working capital requirements, ranging from supply chain finance (SCF), to trade receivables securitisation (TRS), to factoring.

SupplyChainBrain and JobsInLogistics have joined forces in 2014 for the specialized purpose of:

Managing carbon emissions in your supply chain is a constant challenge. You may have control over your own facilities and operations, but it's hard to influence the sustainability practices of third-party carriers and 3PLs. Your request for proposal (RFP) process provides a powerful (and frequently untapped) lever. By including language about registering with EPA's SmartWay Transport Partnership, you can use your RFPs to encourage truck, rail, logis-tics, and multimodal carriers to participate in SmartWay and help you quantify your supply chain’s carbon footprint at the same time.

Businesses are continuing to shift resources from brick-and-mortar and other traditional sales channels to an e-commerce environment. What began primarily for business-to-consumer shopping is being emulated by merchants in the business-to-business sector, and has thus far been successful.

Think of the typical corporate merger as the meeting of two ocean liners. It's tough enough to combine the crews. But how do you mash together two engine rooms?

Despite ongoing economic and business environment challenges, world-class procurement organizations continue to outperform the peer group by a wide margin, up to $6m in cost savings for the typical large company. They deliver services at 19 percent lower cost with greater effectiveness and require 27 percent fewer full-time-equivalents (FTEs) per $1bn in spend. For many, efficiency gains have reached their practical limits. What's next?