Analyst Insight: While the economic slowdown has adversely impacted the volumes of global sourcing and product distribution, global recovery will continue to fuel expansion of importing and exporting worldwide. For companies that source and distribute internationally - more than 80 percent of all companies that make or sell products - supply chain managers need to continue improving their knowledge and processes for effective global supply chain management.

Analyst Insight: The dirty underside of supply chain is confronting the many risks inherent in 24x7-operations entrusted to "partners" in far-flung regions who are conducting fraudulent activities as well as dealing with unpredictable events. The big market here is risk transfer-insurance and others services to mitigate the impact of events. In addition, step by step, we are beginning to see approaches-metric and risk assessments methods, auditing and monitoring services, and technology - to support risk avoidance and assure recovery.

Analyst Insight: Many businesses have been paying more attention to the concept of software as a service (SaaS) and how it can be incorporated into their IT portfolios. The most commonly stated benefits -rapid deployment, lower cost, and scalability - must be balanced by other key decision criterion, such as fit, ROI, and risk.

Analyst Insight: There has been significant debate spanning 20 years about the validity of the "perfect order" metric, which measures the quality of product delivery. The debate mostly focuses on how the metric is calculated and if it is a valid measurement of supply chain performance. But, a more relevant part of the discussion is the mentality that drives organizations toward perfect performance.

Analyst Insight: Leading companies have a portfolio of true end-to-end supply chain metrics, use those metrics in key processes such as S&OP, supplement the metrics with customer and supplier dashboards, and have an open attitude and metrics culture that drives them through an upward spiral of increasingly higher levels of performance. Most importantly: they understand they cannot be good at everything, and they consciously manage tradeoffs.

Analyst Insight: Today's supply chain managers operate in a distributed, networked environment, where multi-tier process visibility and effective partner collaboration are critical to success. In order to successfully balance the risks and rewards of this new environment, companies need to have much more transparent and responsive supply chains than in the past.

Analyst Insight: Before investing in new programs for procurement or other functional areas, organizations must evaluate each program thoroughly as implementation can be a time-consuming and expensive process. However, in many cases the long-term benefits may compensate for the short-term pain.

Analyst Insight: PLM applications have grown up in engineering or technology-oriented value chains where product and technological complexity required a much firmer grasp of specifications and proactive lifecycle management, but a number of market trends suggest PLM applications might offer important capabilities to process manufacturers.

Analyst Insight: 2009 was filled with mergers and acquisitions led by mega mergers. During this time, the definition of "pharmaceutical company" evolved, as the big players began morphing into global health care providers. As the evolution continues, processes for integrating multinational supply chains, new product lines, and rationalizing LSP contracts will challenge even the most capable and visionary supply chain executives.