past year, the largest increase of any of the solutions, reflecting an expanding focus on that area for the supply chain and logistics field. Less dramatically, supply chain control tower grew 6 points to 37%, demand management grew 5 points to 28%, procurement grew 6 points to 27%, and labor management and training grew 5 points to 25%. “Demand is rising fastest for technologies that reduce fragmentation and improve execution across the supply chain,” says Alex Rigo, senior sales director for Banyan Technology, an Ohio-based provider of freight management software. “By function, the strongest growth is in transportation execution and visibility, AI-enabled planning, warehouse automation and integration infrastructure that connects disconnected systems.”
Technology vendors are not simply adding solutions to their o¡erings. Some solutions are being cut because of a lack of demand or not o¡ering vendors enough bang for their buck as they shift in other directions. For instance, in a tie for eighth among o¡ered solutions, transportation management systems fell 7 points to 44% in this year’s survey, and visibility (RFID, IoT, etc.) has plunged 22 points from 2023 to 44%. Also seeing a precipitous fall over the past two years is order management. Two years ago, it was the fifth most-o¡ered solution at 54%, but it has fallen 16 percentage points since then and now sits in 12th place with 38% of vendors o¡ering it. Others to see a notable ebb in the marketplace include electronic data interchange (down 8 points to 40%) and asset management (down 6 points to 16%).
Which supply chain, transportation, and logistics challenges are the most critical for your customers? CHALLENGES
44%
84%
Compliance
Cost reduction
42%
77%
Customer service/CX
Visibility
Inventory management 39% Capacity 39% Growth management 38% Labor 37% Security 37% Demand forecasting 27% Sustainability, ESG initiatives 25% Ecommerce/omnichannel enablement 24% Global expansion 24% Vendor management 22%
63%
AI enablement
59%
Data management
52%
Transport optimization
46%
Risk management
Cost reduction remains the top challenge for technology vendors’ customers, with 85% of respondents citing it, an increase of 5 percentage points over last year. However, a number of other challenges are in the foreground for customers, including some that are growing rapidly in importance. Perhaps the most notable—and least surprising—of these challenges is AI enablement, which was the third most-cited challenge at 63%. That’s a robust 16-percentage point jump from last year’s survey. Its rise is especially stark because it was not even among the
options for respondents to consider two years ago, when AI had not yet surged into ubiquity. Visibility (second most-cited) and data management (fourth most- cited) are also seeing strong growth with increases of 5 and 9 percentage points, respectively, over the past year. Meanwhile, labor has fallen 11 percentage points to 37% over the past two years, and sustainability and ESG initiatives continue to shrink from prominence in the current climate, dropping to 25% with this year’s survey—down 8 points from last year and 16 points from two years ago.
April 2026 • Inbound Logistics 51
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