Analyst Insight: Key to driving performance and achieving your business strategy is choosing KPIs that clearly align with that strategy. This usually involves identifying three or four areas where the company needs to excel, and then defining a "balanced scorecard" of metrics that shows progress toward the business goals, as well as the trade-offs necessary to achieve those goals. - Rodger Howell, Principal, PwC's Strategy&; Derrick Austring, Director, PwC's Strategy&

Analyst Insight: Companies are starting to look at climate change more scientifically. Rather than making judgments based on their own experience, they are using external data to drive models to gauge the potential for disruption to their own supply chains - from singular events such as hurricanes to longer-term effects such as crop migration. This process helps them to understand how truly resilient they are in their ability to source, manufacture and distribute their products. - Glen Goldbach, Principal, PwC; Christoph Hahn, Director, PwC; Kelvin Harris, Director, PwC

Analyst Insight: An enterprise-wide global trade strategy increases supply chain cost and service performance for all trading partners and enables importers and exporters to comply with mandatory trade and security regulations. Companies that prioritize best-in-class global supply chain trade practices, maintain effective global transport / trade organizations and employ enabling technologies are the best positioned to capture the economic and brand benefits available in growing and changing global markets. - Don Anderson, Principal, Tompkins International

Analyst Insight: Given today's intensely competitive business environment, as well as consumers who are more informed and demanding than ever, it's imperative that companies develop customer-driven operations that create a distinctive experience through supply chain capabilities. Simply put, product/service features and pricing are no longer enough to meet customer expectations. And since customers in different segments often have very different needs, generic supply chain capabilities won't cut it. - Joseph S. Roussel; Global Operations Advisor, PwC; Brad Householder, Principal, PwC

Analyst Insight: The next defining opportunity for supply chain is in digital operations. The scope of digital operations is enormous, and it presents amazing opportunities. But failure - either from moving too fast or too slow - may lead to redundancy or, in extreme cases, extinction. Companies must clearly understand where they are today to drive change successfully and must move with purpose. If they cannot, they will be history. - Peter Anderson, Principal, Advisory, Ernst & Young LLP, & Chekyiu Ng, Senior Manager, Advisory, Ernst & Young LLP

Analyst Insight: Cost cutting by itself is not fun for most employees and does not inspire them. But getting lean and cost cutting in some areas to make the company "Fit for Growth" is motivational because the goal is to reallocate resources and invest in capabilities that will help the company win. Once supply chain professionals embrace that the purpose of the cost cutting is smarter investment to become more competitive, they will rally around the cause. - Rodger Howell, Principal, PwC's Strategy&; John Plansky, Principal, PwC's Strategy&

Colman Roche, principal with CRE, offers a high-level perspective of current technological trends in the supply chain.

Analyst Insight: The last two years have seen a rush to provide store fulfillment services - similar to the efforts to deploy e-commerce FCs back in 1998-2000. To date, store fulfillment initiatives have largely been tactical, technology-driven initiatives chartered to leverage existing applications-integration in order to support “save the sale" functionality as well as offload growing FC volumes to the retail store. The coming years will experience a "financial-efficiency" driven effort to maximize profit margin and optimize network inventory efficiency under the new age of constrained IT investment. – Kevin Hume, Principal, Tompkins International