eSilicon has introduced a new supply-chain model to the fabless semiconductor industry. It leverages best-of-class supplier partnerships, deep domain expertise and e-business solutions to provide full-service, fully transparent delivery of custom-designed chips.

As the Customer Relationship Software market matures, it increasingly is being viewed as an enterprise-wide solution that must integrate with other systems at numerous customer touch points. Vendors are developing ways to make that crucial integration easier.

In consolidating and sharing all information about a product throughout its life, product lifecycle management ensures fewer engineering changes, faster time to market and lower overall cost. From suppliers to manufacturers to customers, all parties benefit.

With customers demanding shorter cycle times, visibility is crucial. If you don't know where everything is in the pipeline, you must build in costly buffer stock.

Using complex algorithms to analyze a host of market factors and operating constraints, revenue and pricing optimization tools enable companies to maximize margins. The real power of these systems, however, will come when they are fully integrated with supply-chain management.

New internet-based technologies are illuminating the "black hole" of international logistics and enabling global companies to move toward true command-and-control capability.

The importance of collaboration during a product's design phase is growing tremendously as time-to-market pressures increase and as external partners share more product responsibility. Collaborative Product Commerce attempts to address these needs by tying together islands of product knowledge and expertise early in the process.

Most companies have focused their e-procurement efforts on indirect materials, but the greatest potential for savings is in the much larger category of direct, strategic goods. New software tools are helping manufacturers move this more complex process online.

If the experts are right, Collaborative Commerce is the next big thing in e-business transformation. Cultural and organizational barriers are high, but early adopters of collaborative models are sure to gain huge competitive advantage.

When Gessy Lever, Unilever's Brazilian division, decided to combine two previously separate business units and redesign its distribution network, it tapped on Exel Logistics as a partner. The two companies worked through numerous hurdles to develop solutions that will have long-term benefits for both.