Cloud Supply Chain Management Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

The cloud supply chain management market is expected to reach USD 8.61 billion by 2026 from the present estimate of USD 4.58 billion in 2020 at a CAGR of 11.09% during the forecast period (2021 - 2026). The accelerated adoption of cloud-based business operations globally has digitalized the supply chain industry, as it can accommodate the amplitude of volatility and constant speed, and promote enhanced responsiveness to supply chain disruptions. Organizations are restructuring their supply chains as a digital supply network that unites physical flows of products and services, as well as provides affordable, efficient, safer, infinitely scalable solutions that can be easily integrated with existing systems.

Key Highlights

• Cloud computing is quickly growing to support collaborative transportation management solutions (TMS) and other aspects of transportation management, such as sourcing of network capacity, robust visibility and event management, and ancillary functions, including freight pay and audit.
• Applying cloud-based business analytics and manufacturing intelligence allows manufacturing cycle times to improve, boosting supply chain management. For instance, according to Eurostat, in 2018, 27% of all UK enterprises in the UK manufacturing industry bought storage of files as a cloud computing service.
• Cloud computing is now perceived as a major cost saving alternative, giving a route through which supply chain executives can quickly and efficiently access innovative supply chain solutions, delivered through a SaaS model, and deploy them at scale. For example, according to Cisco Systems, in 2021, 380 million Software as a Service (SaaS) workloads were expected to be installed worldwide.
• Increased investment in IoT, a revolutionary technology that shows promising potential to the supply chain, is expected to drive the market. According to a survey by Kenco Group, 56% of supply chain leaders stated that they planned to invest in sensors and IoT in 2019. In that same survey, 40% of respondents revealed that they intend to invest in blockchain technologies.
• Key vendors utilize collaborative robots or co-bots, the new generation of robots that are safe, smart, collaborative, and can work side-by-side with people. For instance, Amazon, one of the most significant e-commerce players, employs several types of robots (palletizers, robo-stow, and drive unit) within its warehouses that various activities, such as picking up heavy items and preparing goods for shipping or storage.
• Currently, it has 200,000 robots in its warehouse. In 2020, the company invested USD 40 million in a new 350,000-square-foot robotics innovation hub in Massachusetts, which is expected to drive the market in the future.

Key Market Trends

Retail Industry is Expected to Register a Significant Growth

• The retail industry is expected to register significant growth, as most of the key players are adopting cloud-based technologies to transform their supply chains with unprecedented visibility and insights from data. Technology integrations are focused on understanding the customer journey and providing a substantive improvement.
• The retail industry is being challenged with a sluggish economy, declining in-store sales, and margins, rising labor costs. So players require tools that enable organizations to manage paper documents and manage both structured and unstructured data more effectively to remain competitive. Hence, most of the key players are adopting cloud-based technologies to transform their supply chains with unprecedented visibility and insights from data. Technology integrations are focused on understanding the customer journey and providing a substantive improvement.
• Moreover, Buy online, Pick up in-store (BOPIS), is a trend for a mass-market breakout in 2019 that several large retailers adopt to increase the footfall in their stores. Walmart, the largest US retailer, has also has placed pick-up towers in stores and leveraged technologies that support BOPIS such as cloud computing software, devices and mobile architectures linked with inventory and supply chain data that allow store websites and in-store associates to coordinate online orders, in-store available stock, and shipping between stores, in turn driving the market.
• Customer retention has become more important than before due to an increase in players in the market with the growth of e-commerce. Cloud computing helps to enhance the customer experiences as they capture and analyze data from many sources, identify patterns and predict needs, and offer on-demand services. It also provides retailers access to all business content from the core line-of-business applications to provide timely responses and exceptional service to the customers, separating them from their competition.
• Additionally, automation tools improve distribution and inventory management by digitizing inventory information and using analytics and visual reporting processes. Therefore, it enables retailers to automate the supply chain from the inbound carrier to manage and distribute inventory to store-level reconciliation. It leads to lower operational costs, a simpler, faster way to reconcile invoices and improved fill rates by shrinking reorder time.

North America Hold Significant Market Share

• Customers in the United States are profiting from the multiplicity of transport modes in their increasingly connected environment. Logistics businesses offer the integration of information flow through supply chain management software, packaging, material handling, warehousing, forwarding, returned goods management, and brokerage.
• North America may experience notable market growth, principally driven by the selection of GS1 standards designed to promote the safety, efficiency, and visibility of supply chains across physical and digital channels in 25 sectors in the United States.
• Prominent healthcare distributors and suppliers in the region are collaborating with technology providers to make their supply chain capabilities more agile, by implementing cloud services for faster responses via shorter lead times and improving service with lower total costs.
• In the 2019 ranking, UPS Supply Chain Solutions was the foremost logistics firm in the United States. With a customer base, including Pratt Whitney, Philips Healthcare, and Triumph Motorcycles' customer's list, the Georgia-based forwarder made over USD 4.6 billion in revenue from activities in North America.
• In 2019, McKesson Corporation, a provider of third-party logistics services, patient access support, and specialty pharmacy solutions, partnered with TrakCel, a software developer for cell and gene therapy supply chain tracking and orchestration systems, to support cell and gene therapy, late-stage developers.
• Moreover, the United States' gross refrigerated storage capacity is increasing, which is boosting the growth of the market in the region. For instance, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, in 2019, the US gross refrigerated storage capacity amounted to some 3.65 billion cubic feet.
• Also, the increased adoption of cloud in the region is presumed to fuel the use of data analytics platform, which is expected to boost the growth of the market consequently. For instance, according to a survey by the University of Tennessee, in 2018, 40.7% of respondents stated that data analytics might be the critical supply chain management technology in the next two years.

Competitive Landscape

The cloud supply chain management market is highly concentrated and controlled by dominant players, like Oracle Corporation, SAP SE, Descartes Systems Group Inc., Infor Inc., and IBM Corporation. With a notable share in the market, these principal players are concentrating on expanding their customer bases across foreign countries. These businesses are leveraging strategic collaborative initiatives to strengthen their market shares and enhance their profitability. However, with product innovations and technological advancements, midsize to smaller firms are growing their market presence by securing new contracts and tapping new markets. Some of the recent developments in the market are:

• In July 2020 - Oracle Corporation introduced a new Oracle Logistics Digital Assistant, an AI-powered virtual assistant for Oracle Cloud Logistics. With this, the customers of the organization and employees can have easy, on-the-go access to order status and shipment tracking without having to navigate through the Oracle Transportation Management (OTM) application or understand complicated data mappings.
• In June 2020 - Infor, a leader in business cloud software, collaboration with alliance partner Elvenite to deliver a combination of modern technology and successful, reliable implementations for food producers and the grocery trade in the Nordics based around Infor CloudSuite Food and Beverage. It will help customers in the food industry make smart decisions that strengthen Infor’s competitiveness.
• In May 2020 - Descartes Systems Group, one of the global leader in uniting logistics-intensive businesses in commerce, announced that InnoAviation Limited, a leading unit load device (ULD) leasing and services provider, is employing the Descartes CORE ULD tracking solution as part of its service to help air carriers track critical COVID-19 related personal protective equipment (PPE) shipments.

Additional Benefits:

• The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
• 3 months of analyst support