Retailers number one supply chain challenge is consumers’ price sensitivity (and so you might want to read this blog on price transparency. It should be no surprise that the recession, still sharp in our memory, and the still relatively sputtering economy is keeping consumers sensitive to price. Companies looking to deliver more for less, are of course looking for ways to do so via more economical and efficient supply chains.

Beyond that, however, there’s no real consensus as to retailers’ priorities. As Brian Kilcourse, RSR analyst, writes in a newsletter article about the report, “there is no majority opinion about which supply chain opportunities present the best future for retailers.”

Respondents to the survey point to a variety of opportunities, including more real-time monitoring of supply chain conditions, enabling management by exception of supply chain events, better management of supplier performance, and continuous supply chain improvement.

What’s most surprising to me, as a journalist who has spent most of her career covering information technology, is that the technology, coupled by the difficulty in finding real ROI, is what’s standing in the way of improving supply chain operations. Companies surveyed cite technology as a top inhibitor to adequately address cross-channel activity on both buy-side and sell-side. As Kilcourse writes, “For these retailers, it’s time to replace the technology “engine” that powers the supply chain, but they worry just as much that the ROI will be difficult to prove. The concern is a murky reflection of the growing but still unknown importance of cross-channel shopping.”

Finding ROI, especially when the ROI has to be discovered in soft gains rather than tangible improvements, has always been rather difficult, true. But technology should not be holding back progress,  it should be enabling it! I take this as a challenge to vendors: sharpen the ROI cases, present them to your customers, and then help them realize the gains across their end-to-end retailer supply chains.