In the crowded retail marketplace, customer experience is key, and logistical capabilities are what set the winners apart from the less prepared. Companies that are not able to deliver goods at the right time and place will risk losing their customers to one of many competitors. Furthermore, failing to deliver against the lowest costs may mean setting back business goals.

The growing importance of customer experience represents a challenge for the industry, on top of the ever-present need to control costs. However, these are not the only concerns. Rapidly evolving technologies make the retail supply chain increasingly complex to manage. On top of that, sudden disruptions, as experienced with COVID-19, uncovered the vulnerability of global supply chains and the need for improved resilience and agility.

In light of this, we conducted a global survey with Reuters Events to assess how retailers and logistics service providers are currently planning their logistics operations, the difficulties they encounter and the challenges that they foresee in the near future. The report results show that many companies are indeed lacking visibility and efficiency in their logistics planning, with 57% of respondents still relying on spreadsheets or administrative systems. Though they are able to support basic planning measures, these legacy tools were never designed to plan complex logistics operations, let alone deal with the many rules, constraints and disruptions in today’s retail supply chain operations. Accuracy is rated as the second most important aspect of delivery, and yet many organizations notice a significant gap, namely between the plan and the execution of said plan.

Your organization’s success in today’s retail landscape relies on the ability to quickly adapt to change and find opportunities for cost savings while keeping service at a maximum. So, the question now becomes, “How can retail organizations and food distributors create the most efficient plans for their logistics operations and poise themselves for disruptive change?”

In DELMIA’s upcoming webinar, on March 9, we take a deep dive into answering this most pressing concern. Together with Reuters Events and EY, we break down the challenges in today’s retail logistics world, how to overcome those challenges as well as the keys to planning for successful logistics operations.

Attendees will have the exclusive opportunity to engage with senior industry experts in a live Q&A session where they will:

• Uncover the financial implications of inaccurate logistics planning
• Learn the impact of challenges like globalization, disruptions and the growing sustainability mandate on retail businesses
• Explore how to improve flexibility in planning capabilities to minimize the gap between planning and execution and enable consistent delivery and adaptability to sudden peaks in demand
• Determine the right strategic improvements for unique challenges and business goals, from a data management and technology standpoint.

Don’t miss the chance to learn how you can improve your logistics operations through optimized planning, cut logistics-related costs, build resilience into your supply chain and gain a competitive edge in the retail space.

Register for the webinar here.