Collaboration among private-label partners has never been more important, and recent research suggests that in addition to improving organization, communication, safety and compliance, better collaboration among private-label stakeholders can also lead to improved production and cost efficiencies.

Companies across all industries depend more and more on analytics and insights to run their businesses profitably. But, attracting, managing and retaining talented personnel to execute on those strategies remains a challenge.

Inventory visibility is critical to cross-channel flexibility, but a tiered approach to store fulfillment is the brains behind doing it profitably.

Retailers generally have a reputation for being slow to embrace the latest innovations in technology. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the retail industry as a whole spends far less on technology than nearly all other service sectors.

At the beginning of 2013, Williams-Sonoma outlined four key areas of focus: strengthening its brands, laying the foundation for global expansion, investing in supply chain and investing in the technologies and infrastructure that underlay all these initiatives.

O'Reilly Automotive has been on a strong growth path for the past couple of years. Adding to the retailer's success has been its rate of growth and technology evolvement. O'Reilly has been keeping up with the pace of change by replacing its POS transaction engine, integrating promotions and incentives into the new system for a seamless customer experience and enhancing its electronic parts catalog.

Even in today's data-hungry analytics environment, collecting and keeping every tiny granule of retail data - down to the level of each individual transaction and web click - might seem like overkill. But Sears Holdings has discovered that data storage costs have gotten low enough, and analytical tools have grown powerful enough, that this approach to Big Data has shortened the time needed for analytics projects by 60 percent to 70 percent, while also improving promotion conversions, lowering inventory levels and boosting sales.