Across the areas of location intelligence, demand planning and omni-channel management the supply chain of the 21st century is far more about organizational efficiency to minimize risk (lost customers, geo-political and competitive pressures) than it is about taking an existing chain and “rationalizing” it on the basis of cost alone.The sheer complexity of today’s supply chains, stretched across the globe and subject to high demand variability means that finding the trends to follow cannot be a ‘yearly planning’ or ‘quarterly reporting’ task.