As we become increasingly globalized, with more tiers and more hands touching the ingredients in our end-to-end food supply chain, the need for food traceability will only increase.

To minimize potential liability and financial damage, organizations need to be proactive and have demonstrable systems in place to manage food safety risks across their supply chains.

Aberdeen's research shows point-of-sale transaction data from retail locations is still a hurdle for 66 percent of manufacturers. The low levels of transaction data sharing cause increased complexities in tracking promotion effectiveness at the store or field level.

Consumer products companies were early adopters of supply chain planning and supply chain execution. Most implementations are mature; yet in 2009, 24 percent of companies are considering switching supply chain planning vendors.

Corporate responsibility agendas revolve around a triple bottom line (TBL) framework geared to benefit: people, planet and profit. A great deal of business-focused, sustainability research emphasizes a transformation of business processes that support the goals of planet and profit and neglects the centrality of people in making it happen.

Multi-party SCM processes for large enterprises cannot be enabled fully through a traditional packaged application approach. There is a need for a comprehensive business process layer that ties existing investments in ERP or APS systems with add-on business components that can fill gaps in capabilities.