According to the 2019 Retail C-Suite Viewpoint Survey, of 221 global c-level retail leaders planning to expand into infinite choice fulfillment options, 78% do not have a real-time view of their inventory, 55% do not have a single view of their inventory, and 50% believe that supply chain capabilities are behind. Conducted by the retail research firm Incisiv, JDA and Microsoft, the respondents surveyed represent multiple continents, industry segments, and company sizes.
The C-level executives believe that the inventory fulfillment issues are systemically affecting all inventory channels. In fact, 50% of the respondents do not believe that they even have the right tools in place to support expanded inventory fulfillment options with 46% not trusting their current data. On top of that, 50% are unable to sufficiently integrate their data, 45% have limited resources to navigate data output, and 44% admit to lacking a clear data analytics strategy.
While the news comes at a time when retail is increasingly being disrupted and retail executives are facing increased pressure to balance short and long-term transformational goals (48%), and increased resistance to organizational change (41%), they do offer insights for taking retail into the future. The executives believe that key digital transformation imperatives leading to increased agility include incorporating cloud usage to adapt more quickly, speed up time-to-market, and reduce costs, and the respondents are planning a 5x increase in investment in AI technology.