COVID-19 pandemic, customer centricity, rising e-commerce complexity and costs, need for Direct-to-Consumer (D2C), and the risk of financial peril are propelling retailers, manufacturers, and logistics service providers (LSPs) to digitally transform. Companies looking to capitalise on the omni-channel opportunities created by increased online-order volume over the last 18 months are now prioritising more agile delivery and fulfilment models, like D2C. Retailers’ and manufacturers’ online sales increased more than 120% over the past year. LSPs have also seen e-commerce volumes explode, reporting a 200% increase compared to 2019-2020. As the economy transitions to a post-pandemic environment, retailers, manufacturers and LSPs are transforming their transportation and broader supply chain operations to address their most pressing supply chain challenge.
With the growth of e-commerce, investment in modern supply chain technologies and new approaches have become essential for businesses to keep pace with shifting trends and customer expectations. The report found that there are various factors driving investment in supply chain technologies and digital-first practices. LSPs cited the pressure to reduce supply chain costs (58%) while also improving service levels for their retailer customers (48%) and dealing with labor shortages (30%). In the current supply chain environment, companies are moving away from legacy systems and prioritising technologies that enable visibility for customers and their operations, automate processes and support enterprise agility. 63% of retailers/manufacturers and 60% of LSPs agreed that end-to-end visibility is currently yielding the highest ROI in their supply chain execution process. Roughly half (48%) of retailers/manufacturers and more than half (57%) of LSPs have a robust cloud strategy in place, helping to create high levels of infrastructure agility that on-premises, legacy technology systems can’t achieve.