“The challenge for retailers is that they lack connected systems. Thirty-six percent of survey respondents indicated that they have separate demand planning, replenishment, allocation and order management systems for store and ecommerce orders. Combined with the fact that 28 percent don’t manage each of their modules on the same platform, it becomes clear that disparate demand replenishment systems are a significant burden to efficiency.
AI and machine learning holds enormous potential to improve supply chain efficiency, and forward-looking retailers are already investing in these technologies. Retailers say AI’s greatest potential to improve supply chain management relates to quality and speed of planning insights, while nearly half of all respondents identified ‘demand management’ as one of the top three areas for AI in the next five years.”