Retailers are accelerating digital investments to meet rising demands and increasing fulfilment complexity, with a focus on automation across material handling and management software.
Retailers are planning significant investments in advanced digital solutions and warehouse automation to help address supply chain challenges and optimize fulfilment operations. A recent survey by global technology intelligence firm ABI Research found that more than 90% of retailers plan to deploy AI for both decision support and network optimization.
"Gen AI applications have slowly been applied by retailers over the last year, with most exploring system support chatbots and customer-focused support tools. More eyes are turning towards agentic AI applications, and more than 40 percent of respondents strongly agree that AI agents can help automate decision-making for tasks such as adjusting inventory levels, re-routing shipments, and triggering automatic re-orders," said Ryan Wiggin, Senior Analyst.
In addition to software and automation investments, retailers are getting serious about cybersecurity. More than 35% of respondents plan to spend over US$50,000 on IT security within the next year, while OT security spending has shown even stronger growth in recent years due to heightened threat awareness and regulatory mandates.
"Data privacy concerns and difficulty upgrading or integrating with legacy systems are seen as the biggest challenges to improving workflows in retail companies," said Wiggin. "Providers should ensure strong onboarding and ongoing support with a key focus on data management and security throughout."
These findings are from ABI Research's Supply Chain Survey 2025: Retail and Wholesale report, part of the company's Supply Chain Management Software research service, which includes research, data, and ABI Insights.
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