The rapid digitalization in the retail industry is pushing up the popularity of retail sourcing and procurement across the world. Rapid advancements and innovations in digital technologies are revolutionizing the supply chain management process and are predicted to change the way retail procurement provides value to retail companies around the world. As per a recent survey, nearly 84% all procurement companies believe that digitalization would completely change the way procurement services are delivered over the next few years.

With rapid advancements in various digital technologies such as blockchain, robotics, and artificial intelligence (AI), transparency and stock visibility for both retailers and vendors would increase massively in the coming years. Blockchain allows retailers to gain the trust of consumers by supporting autonomous transactions and maintaining chain-of-custody information and procurement and sourcing data. For example, Walmart Inc. and IBM Corporation are working together for implementing the blockchain technology for tracking food supply.

This is improving the efficiency and transparency in the supply chain record keeping process and enhancing the food safety. Additionally, this partnership is using blockchain technology for tracing mangoes from farms to various stores, which is reducing the time taken for tracking the supply of mangoes from weeks or days to two seconds. Due to these factors, the popularity of retail sourcing and procurement is growing rapidly across the world.

This is driving the progress of the global retail sourcing and procurement market. Depending on solution, the market is classified into supplier management, procure-to-pay, spend analysis, contract management, and strategic sourcing. Amongst these, the spend analysis category will exhibit the highest CAGR in the market in the future. This will be because of the rising adoption of spend analysis solutions, due to their ability to offer a detailed grouping, analyzing, categorizing, and cleansing of the spend data of an organization.

When services are taken into consideration, the retail sourcing and procurement market is categorized into training and support, consulting, and implementation. Out of these, the implementation category recorded the highest growth in the market in the past years. The deployment of solutions such as contract management and strategic sourcing requires highly skilled and trained professionals who use various methods for developing a proper operational management system for assisting a business.

Geographically, the retail sourcing and procurement market will demonstrate the fastest growth in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region in the upcoming years, as per the forecast of P&S Intelligence, a market research firm based in India. This will be because of the rapid expansion of the retail industry and the growing awareness among various retail companies operating in the region about the improvements required in their operations such as supplier management, procurement expenses, and contract management.

Hence, it can be said with full confidence that the demand for retail sourcing and procurement will soar all over the world in the upcoming years, primarily because of the rising requirement for more effective and efficient supply chain management process and the rapid digitalization in the retail industry.