State of the Retail Supply Chain 2016

A survey conducted by Martec International highlights the key challenges retailers across Europe and North America face today. The ‘State of the Retail Supply Chain 2016’ report explores the state of supply chain planning and execution in retail covering all aspects from forecasting and replenishment challenges to supplier collaboration, omni-channel, supply chain visibility and more.

The research asked retailers from the Nordics, the UK, Germany and North America with annual sales exceeding €100 million, about the top issues affecting supply chain planning and execution; the challenges they face with forecasting, the visibility they have of their supply chain, whether they operate a single stock pool across all sales channels and how productive their staff are.

Based on interviews with 126 retailers, some of the key findings include:

• 64% of retailers highlighted forecasting for promotions as one of their main challenges
• Yet only 35% had a system capable of building an automatic demand forecast for promotions
• 58% of retailers can’t accurately forecast future out of stocks with their current system
• On average, retailers spend 79 minutes preparing a standard report and 110 minutes preparing an ad hoc report

Read the report to find out the business and system challenges supply chain executives face and how they plan to overcome them.

‘State of the Retail Supply Chain 2016’ report