Retail industry experts believe procurement of goods not for resale (GNFR) - everything from store fittings and staff uniforms to marketing materials, technology, logistics services, facilities management and packaging - has emerged as one of retail's biggest untapped opportunities for improving profitability. Unlike merchandise procurement, which receives constant executive attention, GNFR spending is often fragmented across departments and managed independently by marketing

Visibility isn't enough for supply chain leaders today, says Adrian Wood, director of strategy and marketing at Dassault Systèmes. Organizations need to know how to use the data gathered. Wood acknowledges that visibility is good at telling you what’s happening, but it doesn't tell you what to do next. Control towers, visibility platforms and dashboards may take center stage, but to see what’s occurring in the moment is not as important as the ability to determine what’s comi

In this discussion, Russell Goodman from Supply Chain Brain speaks with Philip Weir, chief commercial officer at Elemica. They are an American-based SaaS provider. Their He explains how the supply chain work needed to make integration of business partners or systems successful is often currently overlooked. The relationships between a company’s chief financial officer and its chief supply chain officer or chief information officer simply do not get the attention they deserve,

Supply chains have been facing significant need to undergo modernisation, with a major focus on agility and resilience. Organisations around the world have different strategies for facing this issue, whether through implementing AI, nearshoring or implementing strategic relationships with partners. Resilience tactics Around the world, supply chains have one disruptive event after another. The last few years has seen a global pandemic, US tariffs, war, closures of critical tra

Remember the ERP vs. Best-of-Breed debates from years ago? If not, here’s the short version: ERP vendors, such as SAP and Oracle, argued that a single integrated platform spanning finance, human resources, customer relationship management, order management, logistics, inventory management, and supply chain planning was the best approach. Why buy separate WMS, TMS, OMS, CRM, and planning systems — and deal with the cost and complexity of integrating and maintaining them all —

Global disruptions in recent years - including the COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical conflicts, shipping delays, infrastructure challenges and rapid technological change - have highlighted how critical supply chain management is. Once regarded as a technical support function that simply supported the movement of goods and services from the point of origin to the customer, it has evolved into a strategic, innovative, technology-driven discipline that shapes cost, risk, resilienc

In this discussion, Robert Bowman from Supply Chain Brain speaks with Gautam Kumar, chief operating officer of FarEye. He explains that although the last mile is only one segment of a multi-leg journey, it accounts for more than half the total cost of shipment. The last mile is just one of several legs involved in the journey of product from seller to end consumer, but as much as 54% of the total delivery cost comes from that segment. The high cost has a lot to do with custom

Generative AI is now widely used by consumers for everything from planning vacations to summarizing the day’s news to organizing shopping lists. The stakes are low for everyday users: A flawed AI-generated restaurant recommendation doesn’t amount to much more than an inconvenience. However, this growing comfort with AI is making its way into the workplace as well, with the share of U.S. employees using AI at work increasing from 21% to 40% in just two years. Employees and the

How connected networks, smarter collaboration, and AI are redefining how supply chains operate. Supply chain leaders are navigating a moment unlike any before. Geopolitical volatility is redrawing trade corridors. Disruption has become the operating condition, not the exception. Transparency mandates are reaching deep into supplier networks. The cost of materials, transportation, and tariffs are all rising. And AI is advancing so rapidly that the gap between early movers and

In this discussion, Robert Bowman from Supply Chain Brain speaks with Jim Lee, principal with the ZS consultancy. They are an American management consulting and technology company. Here, they try to separate hype from reality when it comes to what's happening with AI in transportation, warehousing and logistics. He says that transportation, warehousing and logistics companies today are expressing multiple concerns that could potentially be addressed by AI. The top priorities

Are freight forwarders and customs brokers moving fast enough — and in the right direction? That is the central question explored in the research, which combines survey responses from 125 freight forwarders and customs brokers with executive interviews conducted at the Magaya Momentum conference. Together, the findings point to an industry at an inflection point where technology, customer expectations, workforce transformation, and strategic agility are converging to redefine

A central theme of the 2026 State of Logistics Report is a new supply chain paradigm of persistent disruption that has emerged for shippers and logistics providers, and only the most successful are adapting to this challenging business environment. The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) released its findings today during a press briefing at the Empire State Building. The publication is authored annually by global consulting firm Kearney and presented by

In this discussion, Nick Bowman from Supply Chain Brain speaks with Tony Wayda. His role is as an engagement principal with JBF Consulting. He talks about the challenges of workforce change management, and ensuring that your business has buy-in when implementing new technology. Companies rolling out new transportation technology are often missing a critical piece of the puzzle: Getting their workforce to actually use it. Wayda says many implementations fall short because they

Most shippers have a carrier scorecard. Far fewer have one that does anything. The document gets built, distributed once or twice a quarter, and then quietly ignored by the carriers it was supposed to influence. Performance doesn’t improve; conversations stay the same, and the scorecard becomes a reporting artifact rather than a management tool. Most transportation teams have access to plenty of data: on-time pickup, on-time delivery, tender acceptance, billing accuracy, clai

Alitheon®, the advanced optical-AI pioneer, today announced the closing of the round led by Emerald Technology Ventures, with significant participation from eBay Ventures and continued support from existing investors. The capital accelerates global deployment of Alitheon's FeaturePrint® technology—a category-defining solution backed by 55+ issued patents. The industry has long relied on barcodes, tags, and stickers, but these external proxy markers can be damaged, detached, o

In this discussion, Robert Bowman from Supply Chain Brain speaks with Natalia Andreyeva, vice-president of market-strategy for North America with 4flow. They are an American provider of supply chain consulting, software and fourth-party logistics (4PL) services. In this interview, she talks about the gaps that occur between supply chain ambition and execution. The biggest challenge that supply chains are facing today is the need for resilience in the face of constant market v

The final mile is not simply the last step in the delivery process — it’s also the final moment of truth, where the customer experience is either won or lost for many companies. But delivering on that promise is becoming increasingly difficult. Expectations for speed, visibility, flexibility, and reliability continue to rise, while operational complexity and customer expectations keep growing. So, what separates final mile leaders from the rest? The meaning of final mile deli

Many logistics businesses assume that B2B buying decisions are driven primarily by rational evaluation. The belief is that if a company has the strongest operational capability, the best technical solution, or the most competitive pricing, the market will naturally respond accordingly. In practice, however, buying decisions are rarely that straightforward. Across industries such as logistics, engineering, manufacturing and technology, organisations regularly lose opportunitie

Gartner has revealed a productivity gap as individual AI gains fail to translate into team-level improvements, with low confidence in restructuring operations A productivity disconnect is emerging between individual AI users and broader supply chain teams. According to Gartner, only 36% of Chief Procurement Officers show high confidence in their capacity to restructure roles and workflows around AI technologies. The finding came from research presented at the Gartner Supply C