Retail-Tech Landscape: Supply Chain

Executive Summary

In this report, we continue our Retail-Tech Landscape report series, which spotlights innovative retail-tech companies disrupting the retail industry. This retail-tech landscape covers innovation in the supply chain, featuring start-ups in addition to a few more established companies that are disrupting the current scenario. 

• Managing and optimizing the retail supply chain has evolved from a back-office activity to become the central nervous system, coordinating business planning, production and distribution throughout the enterprise.
• The landscape includes companies headquartered in the US, Europe or Asia and spans 13 categories at every step of the retail value supply chain.
• Relentless demand from global competition, steady share gains from savvy digital commerce companies and technological advances have prompted retailers to embrace software-based tools in their supply chains.
• As competition has intensified and become global, supply chains have become global as well, dramatically increasing complexity and spreading across multiple countries, factories and currencies. Broad technological advances such as the move to cloud-based services and software have also encouraged retailers to adopt these new solutions. 
• Supply-chain software can perform a wide variety of functions, generally focusing on getting goods from warehouse to customer. 
• Other tasks include processing orders, handling distribution, warehouse management and replenishment. The software can also manage sourcing, collecting information and vetting and selecting suppliers as well as managing them.