If business intelligence isn't on your radar yet, it probably will be fairly soon. At last month's D/C Expo, Ron Riggin, chief technology officer at MARC Global, told Modern that business intelligence is rapidly gaining prominence in the supply chain. In response to this, MARC has released a software product capable of tracking worker productivity throughout the work day with data available in real time.

In addition to calculating productivity on a real-time basis, the data enables "predictive management," he says, allowing for action to be taken when an issue arises in the supply chain, not after.

Riggin notes that incremental updates in a warehouse management system, such as his company's new business intelligence offering, are a minor expenditure when compared to replacing an aging system. "People want to leverage what they have in place," he says.