2023 RTIH Innovation Awards: supply chain technology excellence shortlist announced

We’re pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2023 RTIH Innovation Awards Supply Chain category.

We received a record number of submissions this year and many fantastic examples of the continued resilience and dynamism of the retail space during hugely challenging times.

Our winners will be revealed at the 2023 RTIH Innovation Awards ceremony, which will take place at the Barbican Centre in central London.

The event will be held on Wednesday, 29th November, maintaining its popular evening format, with a drinks reception in the stunning Conservatory, followed by a Christmas themed three course meal, and awards presentations in the Garden Room.

Congratulations to all those who made the shortlist.

To book your place at the 2023 RTIH Innovation Awards ceremony on Wednesday, 29th November, click here.

Supply Chain Innovation shortlist as follows:

This award highlights companies that are re-inventing and re-thinking retail supply chains via innovative advancements in technology.

DPD UK

In pursuit of its net zero 2040 goal, DPD UK has launched the EcoLaunchpad programme, where it reaches out to experts in sustainability, technology, and innovation to develop and test new ideas that can help it further reduce its carbon footprint. 

Partnering with L Marks, a global innovation specialist that has worked with major brands such as BMW and Lloyd’s of London, it connects with hundreds of tech startups in order to explore revolutionary innovations to meet its sustainability goals and overcome the limitations it has encountered on its net zero journey.

Flexport

Flexport has expanded its technology platform to create an end-to-end supply chain solution, demystifying the complexities of global trade and enabling companies of all sizes to manage and track products from manufacturer floor to customer door.

In September, it launched the first-ever self-service, end-to-end AI enabled global commerce solution, empowering entrepreneurs with instant, one click access to 20+ supply chain services to all major marketplaces and retail stores, including Shopify and Walmart storefronts, as well as exclusive access to industry leading supply chain financing, priority shipping services, and connections to supply chain experts. 

Invent Analytics

CCC, a European footwear retailer, wanted to increase inventory availability and reduce lost sales but needed a tool to meet its unique business requirements and free its planners from time consuming manual processes and guesswork.

CCC partnered with Invent Analytics to implement a platform that is configurable, and easy-to-use for store replenishment and profit optimisation for inventory. Using AI, the solutions ensure timely product availability in the right quantities and locations, and strategically manage inventory to stores and balance inventory based on profitability between stores.

As a result, CCC significantly improved in-stock ratios, sales, customer satisfaction, and profitability. 

Kammac

Kammac is taking the pain out of e-commerce with its new pop-up fulfilment hubs. Helping startup businesses to outsource their logistics operation within days.

Backed by dedicated centres and experienced personnel, the solution gives companies the flexibility to scale up rapidly without committing to long-term overheads or compromising on customer experience.

It uses a modular design in order to make it quick and cost-effective to a range of businesses; enabling them to benefit from the service, professional expertise and assistance usually only available to much larger and more established online companies. 

Kwayga

Kwayga is a platform for supermarket buyers to engage with perfectly matched suppliers of private label and trending food and drinks products across Europe.

Kwayga's core success is its innovative technology. It automatically matches buyers’ purchase requests with suitable suppliers based on product specifications.

Its Smart Matching System powered by AI enables effortless connections between those buyers and European food and drinks suppliers. Additionally, the company employs AI for chat translation, eliminating language barriers.

On Kwayga, supermarket buyers reduce their sourcing times by 40%. They can also increase market visibility of verified suppliers tenfold across Europe, and benchmark suppliers to improve margins significantly.

Nedap

Nedap helped Scotch & Soda, a high end fashion brand established in 1985 and headquartered in the Netherlands, to create a “single pool of stock” with RFID technology.

As part of the brand’s omnichannel strategy, this enables them to fulfil customer orders flexibly from each channel, e.g. retail, franchise or wholesale, and match supply and demand.

SmartSense by Digi

This initiative protected billions of dollars’ worth of cold chain product for multiple national retail pharmacy chains with significant market share.

SmartSense provided a Sensing-as-a-Service condition monitoring and prescriptive analytics solution to tightly monitor inventory, prevent product loss, and ensure the highest levels of patient safety.

The solution was deployed at several thousand sites across the US, combining state-of-the-art sensor and gateway hardware with highly user-friendly software for automated monitoring, alerting, and employee guidance.

The initiative resulted in significant inventory loss prevention and countless consumer and patient lives protected.   

Studenac

Studenac is working to automate decision making along its supply chain, reducing the need for manual interventions to a minimum.

Its AI powered planning and analytics platform from Solvoyo uses machine learning to analyse inventory and sales data, automatically generating high quality recommendations for the products each of its store managers should order every day.

This project is in line with the retailer’s overall strategy of leveraging advanced analytics and automating decision making in supply chain planning, to support growth while improving efficiency and accuracy in inventory management.

TrusTrace

TrusTrace, a global SaaS company with a platform for traceability, ESG and compliance, provides the world’s largest retail brands with granular, accurate supply chain data.

Spurred by the increasing number and complexity of global laws and regulations, company ESG targets, and consumer demands for insights on product level risk and impact, supply chain data on individual product performance is becoming a must for brands worldwide.

TrusTrace enables a new standard for data collection by helping brands trace the ESG credentials of their supply chain network and capture data for individual production batches in real-time as products move through the chain.

Wiliot

Wiliot’s IoT platform connects digital and physical retail worlds using its stamp sized IoT Pixel devices to address retail’s biggest challenges across supply chain efficiency, omnichannel retailing, food safety, and inventory management.

Once attached, the IoT Pixels connect to Wiliot’s cloud and retailers are equipped with real-time, item level visibility into every product within their supply chains, creating a profound impact on profits and the planet.  

Connecting trillions of things to the internet is transforming retail manufacturing, distribution, and product use to deliver on the company’s vision: a minimum waste, full trust, perfectly timed world where people, profits, and planet remain aligned.