Challenge: As part of an initiative to centralize its global procurement operations, a Fortune 500 diversified manufacturer of engineered components and products needed a way to effectively manage its importing process and reduce procurement costs while enabling real-time collaboration with its global suppliers.

Most companies today are heavily outsourced and have suppliers spread out across the globe. Yet firms' knowledge of their suppliers and the environments they operate in is often limited and out-of-date, crippling their ability to successfully manage the dynamics of their supply base. This has introduced substantially more risk in global businesses.

Theft of trade secrets costs jobs and the global economy billions of dollars a year, according to a report released by the Center for Responsible Enterprise and Trade (CREATe.org) - a Washington-based non-profit industry group focused on responsible business practices.

Mid-market companies are increasingly at risk for violating U.S. export regulations, even as U.S. export volumes continue to grow, according to a report released by Amber Road, a provider of global trade management solutions.

Swissport International Ltd., a provider of air-cargo handling services, is now offering its track-and-trace capability for cargo customers and their partners via mobile phones.

Oracle Corp. has joined with Infosys, a Diamond-level member of the Oracle Partner network, to create Oracle Project Driven Supply Chain for High Technology Companies.

JDA Software Group Inc. has released JDA 3D, an application that provides integrated category optimization with three-dimensional virtualization, to enhance collaboration among retailers, distributors and manufacturers.

"Sales Carbon Operations Planning" (SCOP) offers a new take on supply-chain management, bringing together traditional sales and operations planning (S&OP) techniques and the need for companies to track and reduce their carbon emissions. "It's my way of making it easy to transfer into sustainability with your existing processes," says Silvia Leahu-Aluas, owner of Sustainable Manufacturing Consulting. The new term covers everything from basic carbon dioxide management to a full understanding of the economic and environmental impact of greenhouse gas emissions.

Challenge: A global provider of communications equipment sells test and measurement solutions used in the telecommunications, optical, and wireless industries. Its customers are located globally, including throughout North America, Latin America, South America, Europe, and Asia. As their business expanded and regulatory requirements tightened following 9/11, maintaining export compliance excellence became increasingly time-consuming. Restricted party list compilation and screening, license requirement determination, and end-use screening were manually intensive processes that increased corporate risk of noncompliance and ate into the productivity of order management, compliance, and logistics departments.

With sluggish U.S. growth, international business expansion has become a vital strategic pillar for many companies. Yet, an international expansion strategy is fraught with uncertainties, risks and other obstacles. So is it worth it? That is, are companies that grow faster internationally rewarded by investors with better share price appreciation such that the risks are worth taking?