Impinj, Inc., a leading RAIN RFID provider and Internet of Things pioneer, has officially published results from its Supply Chain Integrity Outlook 2025 research report, which happened to entertain responses from 1,000 US supply chain managers.
Going by the available details, the findings reveal a significant data accuracy gap which leaves many struggling to find the level of insights, visibility, and accuracy required to drive confidence in their supply chain and respond quickly to market changes. You see, while the majority (91%) of supply chain managers believe they are equipped to realize accurate supply chain visibility, the reality is that only a third (33%) consistently obtain accurate, real-time inventory data.
More on the given report would reveal how this data accuracy gap actually hampers supply chain managers’ ability to address key challenges, including counterfeit goods, shrink and theft, misload and delivery errors, meeting sustainability requirements, and effectively implementing AI within their organization’s supply chain.
“Supply chain managers continue to face data blind spots that prevent them from ensuring secure, reliable, and adaptable supply chains,” said Jeff Dossett, Chief Revenue Officer at Impinj. “It’s essential that organizations address the data accuracy gap by putting technology in place to surface accurate data that fuels the real-time, actionable insights and visibility needed to ensure supply chain resilience.”
Talk about these challenges on a slightly deeper level, we begin from the challenge of counterfeit goods. Here, more than 65% of supply chain managers agreed it’s a challenge for their organization to reduce the amount of counterfeit goods entering the supply chain. Hence, nearly all were found to be taking measures to combat counterfeiting.
Not just that, the surveyed retail supply chain managers also reported that they are taking measures like implementing new technologies for authentication of goods in transit (44%), for general goods verification (42%), and introducing more authentication checkpoints throughout the supply chain (40%), to fight counterfeiting.
The next challenge in line would be shrink and theft in retail, where 60% of retail supply chain managers surveyed said that reducing rates of shrink and theft is a challenge for their organization, with an overwhelming majority (99%) investing in measures to mitigate these concerns. Keeping that in mind, increasing security checkpoints during transit and delivery (48%) and implementing new technologies for tracking goods (41%) emerged as a two of the top measures that retailers are taking to minimize the impact of shrink and theft.
Then, we have the challenge of shrinkage in the food, grocery, and restaurant sector. To put things into context, more than 82% of supply chain managers report challenges in reducing shrink. If we dig a little deeper, we would see how shoplifting (45%), food spoilage (37%), and food waste (35%) were among the top causes of shrink reported by supply chain managers across the food industry.
In response to these challenges, the survey found how some of the key measures that organizations are taking to combat such a problem include implementing new technologies for shopfloor surveillance (45%), tracking goods (44%), and reducing food waste (44%).
Another challenge here is concerned with reducing misloads and delivery errors in transportation and logistics. In essence, almost three quarters (74%) of surveyed supply chain managers within transportation and logistics firms are concerned about growing volumes of Load Planning Problems (LPPs), misloads, and delivery errors impacting their organization. In fact, survey respondents went on to claim that the largest volume of errors is most likely to occur as a result of delivery and last-mile misloads (24%) and label inaccuracies (22%).
As a way of mitigating this problem, almost half of all transportation and logistics firms plan on investing in improving shipment accuracy and reducing delivery errors to complement their sustainability efforts.
Among other things, Impinj’s survey also revealed that over half (52%) of supply chain managers face challenges responding to rapid peaks in customer demand driven by social media- and influencer-driven trends. Alongside that, half (47%) supply chain managers reported changes in customer demand due to growth in social media storefronts (49%) and the rise of the thrift movement (47%).
