10 trends to watch.

By Bill Spaide

Crystal-ball gazing is not a widely practiced art in the world of fulfillment. Being very much a tactical discipline, fulfillment is more focused on the here and now.

With calls having to be answered in 20 seconds and orders to be shipped in 24 hours, fulfillment is a near real-time, decision-making process — one that historically owes as much to operational flexibility as it does to operational planning.