from 28 percent last year. Supporting revenue growth was second, with
31 percent (up from 22 percent in 2016), while balancing cost and service
was third, at 19 percent, the same as last year.
For the latest survey, professors Brian Gibson, Rafay Ishfaq, and Cliff
Defee of Auburn University’s Harbert College of Business polled RILA’s
members, DC VELOCITY’s readers, and retailers that collaborate with the
Auburn, Ala., university’s Center for Supply Chain Innovation. To round
out the picture, the research team conducted telephone interviews with
retail supply chain executives. The study’s final results will be released
at RILA’s 2017 Retail Supply Chain Conference in Orlando, Fla., in
mid-February, but the preliminary findings discussed in this article provide useful insight into how retailers are managing their supply chains in
an increasingly omnichannel world.
THREE HOT TOPICS
The survey’s 60 or so respondents represent U.S. retailers of all sizes, with
projected 2017 revenues ranging from below $1 billion to more than $10
billion. They are also well qualified to speak about supply chain strategy:
About 33 percent hold director or vice president positions, and 50 percent
classified themselves as managers. Respondents have 20 years of supply
chain management experience on average.
Each year, the study zeroes in on three “hot topics.” This year, those
topics were cross-channel integration, analytics, and cost control and
recovery. All three are critically important at a time when retailers
must be able to track, manage, and deploy inventory across an enterprise, regardless of location or sales channel, while responding to—and
often anticipating—customers’ preferences. Those mandates no doubt
inform respondents’ plans for supply chain-related investments in 2017.
Compared with 2016 spending levels, 43 percent plan to increase their
investments in supply chain process improvements, 37 percent plan to
expand their omnichannel fulfillment capabilities, and 36 percent said
they plan to upgrade their supply chain technology and software.
Here are some highlights from the preliminary survey results as well as
a sampling of the researchers’ comments on those findings:
As for the degree of cross-channel integration achieved to date,
respondents counted themselves most successful when it came to order
fulfillment, with 50 percent saying they’ve already achieved complete
integration and 39 percent saying they have partially integrated that func-
tion. One-third said they have completely integrated order management
systems, inventory allocation, and order delivery across channels. It’s tell-
ing that 44 percent currently have no cross-channel integration in returns
