Analyst Insight: There are many flavors of supplier networks. And switching costs, especially on the buyers' side, can be high - because these are solutions, not just networks. For these reasons, we will not see the consolidation of supplier networks to nearly the same extent that we see for other types of networks. - Bill McBeath, chief research officer, ChainLink Research

Analyst Insight: The awareness of supply chain finance (SCF) in emerging markets is growing. Most recently, foreign importers of goods manufactured in emerging markets, procure-to-pay software providers and financial institutions have been driving increased activity globally. Companies in emerging markets, especially in the small and medium-sized segment, stand to achieve business gains with better understanding of their end-to-end financial supply chains and proper application of available SCF strategies and solutions. - Viktoria Sadlovska, managing director and CRO, Prameya Research

The year 2014 will see the debut of the Triple E, first of a series of at least 20 containerships to be operated by Denmark's Maersk Line, each with a capacity of 18,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs). Few could have imagined this behemoth at the dawn of containerization in the mid-1950s. (Malcom McLean's Ideal X carried only 58 boxes.) In the ensuing decades, containerships grew steadily in size, as operators sought to squeeze the most out of their investments. When ships became too wide to fit through the Panama Canal, builders doubled down. Between 2008 and 2015, average ship size will have risen from 6,000 TEUs to more than 11,000 TEUs, according to Lars Jensen, chief executive officer and partner with SeaIntel Maritime Analysis. Maersk's Triple Es will dwarf them all.

Analyst Insight: Economic challenges have kept sales and operations planning at the forefront of the supply chain executive's mind. Research has successfully identified the financial benefits that S&OP and integrated business planning (IBP) bring to the table: for example, the Aberdeen Group points to best-in-class companies and the two- to six-times benefits they gained in several key metrics, especially gross margin, in comparison with other companies that did not employ S&OP. Nari Viswanathan, vice president, solutions architecture, Steelwedge Software