Mobility is a hot topic these days. Regardless of industry or profession, a mobile application or ecosystem is in development to serve it. The supply chain is no different. In fact, given its very manual and distributed nature, the supply chain is better suited to mobile application deployment than most business processes. For distribution and fulfillment services, where most of the activities take place away from the desktop, the extension of business processes to mobile applications just makes sense. Most CEOs today are looking to the supply chain for competitive advantage (think Amazon's drones), so the time is right for supply chain managers to begin the process of introducing mobile into their processes.

Analyst Insight: Companies today face a wide range of security risks to their supply chains as well as to their sources of supply. In order to overcome vulnerabilities, they should have a deep understanding of their internal and external supply chains, and be able to quantify the likelihood and impact of security threats. – Glen Goldbach, Director, and Kelvin Harris, Director, PwC's Advisory Practice

Vendors "are seeing the cloud as the opportunity for the future and are looking at revenue models and thinking of offering a subscription-based service to reduce clients' CAPEX," according to Jagdish Rebello, senior manager for cloud and computer electronics at IHS. "Microsoft's doing that, Oracle's trying to do that, Google's doing that, and Salesforce.com is seeing explosive growth."

Online sales are predicted to be about $300bn this year, rise to $335bn next year and be worth $512bn by 2020, according to research from FTI Consulting Inc.

UK retailers continue to receive a growing number of online orders from abroad - and the trend is set to continue, according to recent research.

A Middle East IT service management firm has helped one of the region's leading shipping companies improve efficiency by automating manual incident handling and service desk operations.

Any attempt to apply "lean" thinking to a manufacturer or retailer's supply chain must have merchandise lifecycle plans in alignment with supply chain strategy to succeed, according to the vice president of strategic services at software company JDA.

Many past decisions to offshore manufacturing were based on price alone. Today, manufacturers are looking at more than just price when considering sourcing decisions and production locations.