Current geopolitical uncertainty and heightened consumer expectations require supply chains built for flexibility. The ability to pivot quickly and confidently isn’t optional. If you're navigating supply chain transformation, RILA Link 2026 offered a pragmatic roadmap; one that balances innovation with readiness and strategy with results. The six insights below empower that agility, giving you the foundation to move fast without breaking what works.
Retail Learning #1: Your People Are Your Platform
Technology investment alone won't transform your supply chain. The organizations making real progress are aligning leadership, frontline capability, and operating models alongside their new platforms. Change adoption, cross-functional ownership, and workforce readiness emerged as the true performance multipliers.
L.L. Bean and Duluth Trading Company demonstrated how embedded change champions and frontline engagement make transformation stick. This includes leaders, too. Grocery and general merchandise leaders reinforced that coaching and operating discipline create the foundation that allows automation and analytics to scale. The lesson is from the top down to the bottom up, your people determine whether your technology delivers or sits idle.
Retail Learning #2: Sequence Smart, Not Fast
Modernization isn't about ripping and replacing systems, it's about building on solid ground. Multiple leaders described hitting pause on automation rollouts when data integrity, core processes, or systems readiness couldn't support scale. Our Strategic Prioritization discussions with Lowe's and 3M reinforced a fundamental truth: sequencing matters more than speed.
Speakers from L.L. Bean and Coca-Cola connected resilience and agility to strong operational foundations. If your foundation isn't ready, your modernization won't hold and you’ll likely incur more tech debt along the way.
Retail Learning #3: AI Is Working Where It's Focused
The AI conversation has shifted from hype to execution. Leaders shared measurable value in forecasting, merchandise and inventory planning, anomaly detection, and scenario modeling, all applications delivering results today. REI and Tailored Brands showcased AI models improving planning accuracy and exception visibility, particularly where large-scale data patterns exceed manual review capacity.
Wins are coming from focused deployment with governance guardrails and tight workflow integration. If you're looking for AI value, start narrow and targeted.
Retail Learning #4: Planning Gets Precise
Merchandise and inventory planning emerged as a high-impact transformation zone. Spreadsheets and rule-based approaches are giving way to AI and optimization platforms that operate at SKU and location level which tie directly to financial outcomes and service performance.
Tailored Brands shared how advanced planning tools improved inventory positioning and purchasing decisions across complex apparel flows. Broader planning sessions linked customer demand shifts and capital decisions to tighter coordination between planning and supply chain teams. The result? More responsive supply chains that serve customers better while improving working capital performance.
Retail Learning #5: Prioritization and Governance: Enabling Faster Decisions
Initiative overload kills momentum. Disciplined prioritization and governance emerged as essential mechanisms for reducing complexity and improving execution speed. Leaders described objective-based filtering, metric hierarchies, and ninety-day execution cycles as practical tools that convert strategy into measurable progress.
In our panel with Lowe's and 3M, we explored how decision speed improves when you align on outcomes, clarify tradeoffs, and sequence work based on readiness and value. The question isn't what you can do, it's what you should do first.
Retail Learning #6: Culture Determines What Holds
Even well-designed programs fail when culture doesn't support them. Subtle resistance, workaround behavior, and partial adoption undermine gains faster than any external challenges. Leaders from Duluth Trading Company and major grocery networks emphasized continuous improvement habits, visible leadership presence, and structured feedback loops as non-negotiables for sustaining transformation.
The reframe was powerful: transformation is a repeatable organizational capability you build through discipline, leadership commitment, and cultural alignment.
The path forward is clear. Build strong operational foundations. Align your people with your platforms. Deploy AI where it creates real value. Prioritize with discipline. And embed the cultural habits that make change stick.
That's how you turn supply chain vision into sustainable results. That's how you go from strategy to reality.
