Worldwide Supply Chain Strategies: Transportation, Logistics, and Global Trade Management

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Meet the Experts

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Simon Ellis

Group Vice President

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Stephanie Krishnan

Associate Vice President

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Travis Eide

Research Director, WW Global Supply Chain Transportation and Global Trade



IDC's Worldwide Supply Chain Strategies: Transportation, Logistics, and Global Trade Management advisory service arms manufacturing, retail, and pharmaceutical companies with the specific knowledge necessary to globally deploy extended supply chain transportation and global trade capabilities and better manage supporting business processes. These business process investments drive interest in research that helps businesses, and their partners make more insightful and informed decisions on the deployment of global supply chain transportation, global trade strategies, and supporting technology applications. Forward-looking research combined with fact-based analysis of successful global supply chain transportation strategies provides clients with practical ways to better manage supply chain trade-offs, support changing business models, improve service performance, and better understand customer and consumer relationships while minimizing cost.

This advisory service provides coverage of transportation, logistics, and global trade management technology and services. This includes transportation management, route management, global trade management, and driver compliance management software applications along with third-party logistics (3PL), 4PL, FTL, and LTL services. This program is also responsible for coverage of the commercial transportation industry segment.


Markets and Subjects Analyzed


  • Transportation management system applications
  • Last-mile transportation and delivery applications
  • Global trade management applications
  • Track and trace/logistics visibility applications
  • Fleet management applications
  • Driver compliance tracking applications
  • Third-party logistics services
  • Global settlement services and freight forwarding
  • Rate management software
  • Commercial transportation industry including over the road, water, rail, air, and multimodal

Core Research


  • IDC MaturityScape: Transportation Management Systems and Global Trade
  • IDC MarketScape: Transportation Management Systems Vendor Assessment
  • IDC TechScape: Transportation Management Systems and Global Trade
  • IDC MarketScape: Global Trade Management Vendor Assessment

In addition to the insight provided in this service, IDC may conduct research on specific topics or emerging market segments via research offerings that require additional IDC funding and client investment.


Key Questions Answered


  1. What is the best fleet automation strategy and what is the business case?
  2. Which transportation management vendor is best for each industry?
  3. How are digital technologies — and digital transformation in general — impacting transportation and global trade?
  4. What defines successful customer and supplier relationships?
  5. What are the new features in global trade management software that buyers will be looking for?
  6. Which logistics service providers offer the best capabilities?
  7. What are the best approaches to optimizing freight costs?