Analyst Insight: Though there is no question that modern business process management (BPM) applications have the potential to solve many technical aspects of business processes challenges, the productive consolidation and integration of this evolution into the corporate culture requires that the management of business processes shift toward an approach that is data-driven, widely supported, and better communicated at the organizational level. - Jorge García, research analyst, Technology Evaluation Centers

Analyst Insight: In the past, collaboration technology has been a separate software segment encompassing web conferencing and document sharing. But technology providers are now blending these solutions with business applications such as logistics, forecasting and product design, creating a more natural user experience. After all, collaboration is about the business and the people. Collaboration is also a catalyst for other technology sectors such as cloud, mobile and network infrastructure. - Ann Grackin, CEO, ChainLink Research

Analyst Insight: Consumer packaged goods manufacturers are being squeezed by trends in customer purchasing and technology, coupled with pricing pressures, higher input costs, and fluctuating commodity prices. In today's market, CPG companies have to integrate and collaborate with trading partners and better manage retail shelf space. Growing recognition that failure to innovate will result in poor performance, acquisition, or worse, is driving leading CPG companies to transform their operating models. - Ben Pivar, vice president, Supply Chain Technologies Practice, Capgemini North America Applications Services

Analyst Insight: Shippers have made great advances in transportation management in the last decade by centralizing procurement and transportation planning organizations, as well as investing in TMS. The question now is: What's the next big thing? As the use of supply chain technology and information sharing grows, there is an increase in the meaningful use of information and integrating transportation with other functions. These areas have already demonstrated significant benefits for pioneering shippers and are clearly breakthroughs in transportation management. - Bill Loftis, principal, Tompkins International

Analyst Insight: Most supply chain management organizations struggle with functional and application silos that make orchestrating and synchronizing business processes across their organization near impossible. Supply chain execution convergence is an emerging Gartner concept where SCE functional silos are broken down and business processes span, optimize and synchronize across traditional functional domains. - Dwight Klappich, vice president, Gartner Inc.

Analyst Insight: Warehouse management system vendors have used the slower market demand of 2009 and 2010 to invest in improved architecture and functionality. Today, the WMS market has seen a robust return in upgrades and new solution selections. Leading WMS application providers - from integrated ERP solutions to best-of-breed suite applications - all tout upgrades in architecture, new user interfaces and robust operational support. - Kevin Hume, principal, Tompkins International

Analyst Insight: The sales and operations planning process has evolved from manufacturing conflict resolution in the late 1980s to data- and visibility-enhanced strategic demand and supply balancing for retail executives today. This is a remarkable evolution for a concept. As visibility continues to increase, could S&OP become the primary tool for managing supply chains or, for some, complete businesses? - Ralph Cox, principal, Tompkins International

Analyst Insight: For as long as we can remember, product lifecycle management technology has evolved in an incremental way, absorbing and exploiting new technologies as they've come along and steadily gaining in capability to meet the challenges of multi-organisation product development efforts and supply chains. Currently, the PLM solutions industry is being subjected to a looming confluence of pressures that represents both a major challenge to established approaches and a substantial opportunity for harnessing new technologies to drive further benefit. - Tony Christian, principal analyst, Cambashi

Analyst Insight: In recent years, Software as a Service and hosted solutions have made some significant in-roads in the supply chain application space, but their success has been somewhat limited. Continuing IT budget and resource constraints are causing many firms to take a serious look at on-demand supply chain applications. And software vendors have responded by increasing the number and variety of services provided. This mixture is expanding the horizon of on-demand supply chain IT solutions. - Tom Singer, principal, Tompkins International