The ocean freight industry is greatly in need of a way to automate and digitize the contracting process — and so is every other stage of the supply chain, says Matt Marshall, senior vice president with NYSHEX.

The answer is yes: Customers are increasingly demonstrating a commitment to sustainable shipping, even if that means waiting a bit longer for their orders to arrive, says TJ Roberts. vice president of enterprise accounts with Sifted.

Seth Marks, chief merchandising officer with Channel Control Merchants, details the major issues that logistics providers are facing as they deal with increasing volumes of returned products.

Retailers and suppliers face multiple headwinds, but they should be looking at the situation as an opportunity to cut costs and streamline supply chains, says Jason Murray, chief executive officer of Shipium.

If you don't have a complete view to your global supply chain data, you hamstring your profitability, says Hannah Testani, chief executive officer of Intelligent Audit.

Is sales and operations planning obsolete? Not at all, says Evan Quasney, vice president of solutions marketing with Anaplan. But there's a need for organizations to take a deeper approach to connected planning, to achieve competitive advantage.

Ram Gopalakrishnan, chief executive officer of Bricz, discusses the technology investments that retailers need to make to deal with today's supply chain challenges.

Mergers and acquisitions and a digital-savvy younger generation are changing the landscape in supply chain planning, says Alex Pradhan, product strategy leader at John Galt Solutions.

Quality assurance management no longer needs to convince the C-suite of its contribution to the bottom line, says Lusi Zheng, senior director of quality assurance, with Gartner.

Kyle Jepson, senior vice president of product at Emerge, discusses inefficiencies and empty miles in domestic transportation, and the technologies necessary to overcome those problems.