Let’s get honest about something
Most retailers are drowning in technology that doesn’t actually help them make better decisions.
Peak season is coming. You’ve got a warehouse management system that doesn’t talk to your order management platform. An AI tool that promised to revolutionize forecasting but mostly just generates colorful charts. Maybe you spent six figures on some automation that works great until it doesn’t.
Meanwhile, your most innovative competitors figured out something crucial: more technology doesn’t make you smarter. Better technology and real commerce intelligence do.
Findings of our newest Peak Season report reveal a strategic shift toward resilience, long-term stability, and forecasting accuracy over the crisis mentality that characterized previous years.
The great tech pile-up
Our Peak Season 2025 research caught something interesting. Last year, 51% of retailers were investing heavily in AI experiments. 42% were buying automated guided vehicles. Everyone was chasing the newest, shiniest solution.
How’d that work out? Well, 84% of supply chain leaders are now prioritizing system integration and visibility over flashy new toys.
While AI in the supply chain can drive significant value, there must be a solid strategy behind it.
This warrants a separate conversation on what you should know. Check out our AI Supply Chain Report: “How Leaders Are Achieving Breakthrough ROI”
What will move the needle for Peak 2025?
The retailers who are winning—and by winning, we mean 76% expect to outperform competitors in 2025—aren’t buying more technology. They’re buying smarter technology.
Here’s what they’re focused on:
- 28% are upgrading systems for actual visibility (not just more data; integrated and practical data)
- 26% are integrating automation that works with what they already have
- 28% are building forecasting that includes real economic factors, not just last year’s sales
- 26% are optimizing cross-border logistics because global is complicated
Notice what’s missing? The latest AI chatbot. The revolutionary blockchain solution. The standalone automation platform that promises to replace your entire workforce.
The integration wake-up call
Here’s what successful retailers learned the hard way: if your systems can’t talk to each other, you’re basically flying blind with really expensive instruments.
Take shipping costs, for example.
They’re hitting everyone hard right now. The retailers still running on disconnected systems discover cost overruns after the damage is done. They’re reacting to problems instead of preventing them.
The integrated retailers?
They see cost trends developing. They adjust inventory positioning before it becomes a crisis. They reroute orders automatically when rates spike. They turn complexity into competitive advantage because their systems actually work together.
“Commerce Intelligence” isn’t just a buzzword
If you hear the words “commerce intelligence” you may be skeptical at first. Another vendor promising to make everything magically better with AI?
But our approach is different. Instead of selling you another standalone tool, we’re building intelligence into the platform you’re already using. Our Supply Chain Intelligence (SCI) suite doesn’t just collect data—it tells you what to do about it (in real time).
Yes, our Shipping Intelligence application tracks your shipping costs. But it also benchmarks them against other companies on the platform. It identifies where you’re overspending and why. It suggests better carrier relationships and routing options that actually save money.
Welcome to the world of AI-enabled (everything). In the words of a hot sauce, “they put that *** on everything.” The issue lies in validation and realized ROI benefits.
That’s not AI for the sake of AI. That’s using technology to make better decisions faster than your competition.
The real competitive advantage
Rather than ‘who has the most technology?, it’s ‘who has technology that makes them smarter about their business?’
When you can see exactly what’s happening across your entire operation in real-time, you stop reacting to problems and start preventing them. When you can benchmark your performance against industry standards automatically, you know where to focus improvement efforts. When your systems suggest optimizations based on actual data instead of guesswork, you make better decisions faster.
That’s what 84% confidence in fulfillment systems looks like. Not hope. Not crossed fingers. Just systems that work and data you can trust.
Schedule a 1:1 personalized demo of Deposco’s SCI solutions. Using Intelligence, you can identify opportunities you never knew existed. Reduce costs you thought were unavoidable. And improve peak performance like you never dreamed possible.
The three pillars that matter
In 2025, successful retailers will focus their tech investments on three things that drive results for peak season and beyond:
- Real-time cost and margin visibility (32% priority): Know exactly where you stand financially at any moment. Not yesterday’s numbers. Not last week’s estimates. Right now.
- Multi-region supplier risk management (30% priority): Global supply chains are complex. Systems that track supplier performance, identify risks, and suggest alternatives keep you ahead of disruptions instead of scrambling to catch up.
- Integrated data visibility (30% priority): All your systems talking to each other so you can make decisions based on complete information instead of departmental guesses.
Stop collecting data, start making decisions
So instead of thinking about how much data you have, think about how fast you can turn data into action.
66% of retailers expect better margins in 2025 by building operations that give them the visibility and control to navigate whatever comes next.
Rather than buying technology to solve problems they have today, they’re building platforms that help them see issues coming and fix them before they impact business.
The choice is simple
All of this becomes clear when you consider what we found in a before-and-after survey in January 2025: critical misalignments between expected and actual performance across organizations. As one supply chain director put it: “We entered peak thinking our systems could handle anything. By week two, we were already in crisis mode.”
Findings from that survey tell the story:
- 93% of supply chain leaders expected to meet customer expectations
- 58% struggled with delivery timing and order accuracy
- 65% faced significant staffing challenges despite pre-season planning
- 47% reported their systems couldn’t handle unexpected volume spikes
One warehouse manager noted, “Our technology looked great on paper, but when we hit peak volumes, the cracks started showing. Simple tasks became bottlenecks.”
What can 2024 teach us about 2025? What causes the gap, and what’s the cost of not addressing technology gaps now?
You can keep adding point solutions and hoping they eventually work together. You can chase the latest AI trend and wonder why it doesn’t integrate with anything else you’re running.
Or you can build the right technology infrastructure to makes your business smarter.
Making this shift will help you pivot from simply surviving peak season to pulling ahead of competitors who are still managing crisis after crisis with disconnected systems.
Want to see exactly how this works? Schedule a strategic session with one of our experts. We’ll break down the specific technology strategies, integration priorities, and platform choices that separate the winners from everyone else still fighting fires with a garden hose.