Executive Summary

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.

• Supply chains have become global, dramatically increasing complexity and spreading across multiple countries, factories and currencies. This level of complexity can generate data that is beyond the human capacity to interpret, but there is software that excels in classifying and interpreting data.
• Supply-chain management software provides a real-time platform to analyze and manage the flow of product and information across the entire supply chain. The software manages the production, inventory, sourcing, logistics as well as forecasts product demand.
• The global supply chain management software market is estimated to be worth more than $14 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow at a 9.5% CAGR during 2016-2025E, based on a forecast from Allied Market Research.
• New software technologies such as machine learning that enable retailers to glean insights and make predictions from  data, in addition to benefits from other hardware and software technologies such as 3D printing and the Internet of Things (IoT).