As global supply chains grow increasingly complex and economic headwinds persist, brands face mounting pressure to optimize their operations while controlling costs.
The result?
A technology landscape where companies must carefully balance innovation with pragmatism, seeking tools that deliver clear ROI without overwhelming already-at-capacity teams.
Based on a comprehensive survey of 90 supply chain leaders — primarily director-level and above at brands doing $50-250M in revenue — along with in-depth interviews with industry experts, this report examines how companies are navigating these challenges and where they’re placing their technology bets for the future.
Executive summary
The 2025 supply chain tech stack landscape reflects an industry at a crossroads.
Based on our survey, only 7% of brands report being “very satisfied” with their current technology solutions. This dissatisfaction stems from a fundamental tension: the need to innovate while operating under significant resource constraints.
Key findings
Integration remains the biggest challenge
- 60% of respondents cite lack of integration between tools as their primary pain point
- 50% struggle with limited visibility or reporting capabilities
- Despite these challenges, 41% still don't use any workflow automation platform
Cost pressures driving conservative tech adoption
- Budget constraints are the primary barrier to adoption for 45% of respondents
- Team bandwidth emerged as a critical limiting factor in write-in responses
- Mid-sized companies ($50M-$250M) struggle most with tech satisfaction
AI is reaching critical mass
- 52% are already using AI-powered tools
- 35% are planning to implement AI
- 54% view AI as “essential” to future operations
- Notably, zero respondents dismissed AI as overhyped
Supply chain visibility is emerging as a top priority
- Advanced supply chain visibility tools were cited by 53% as a key 2025 tech opportunity
- AI/ML for demand forecasting leads future investment priorities at 55%
- Financial visibility and reconciliation are emerging as critical pain points
What’s next?
Success will come to organizations that can make strategic technology investments while building the internal expertise to leverage them effectively. The challenge isn’t just selecting the right tools — it’s creating an integrated technology ecosystem that can scale efficiently while delivering clear ROI.
Report methodology
This report is based on a comprehensive survey of 90 supply chain and operations leaders conducted in early 2025 by Parabola and StartOps. The respondent pool primarily consisted of senior decision-makers at consumer brands:
Seniority level
Company size by annual revenue
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The survey covered current technology usage, satisfaction levels, pain points, and future investment priorities across key operational areas including:
- Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
- Warehouse Management Systems (WMS)
- Workflow automation
- AI implementation
- Supply chain visibility tools
- Inventory and demand planning
The state of supply chain tech stacks in 2025: A mixed bag
Complex formulas in Excel or ERP exports are fragile, error-prone, and difficult to maintain. Parabola replaces that with plain-language steps and AI-enabled transforms.
How Parabola enables this:
- Instead of writing nested formulas, operators describe business rules in natural language. Parabola translates those prompts into live, executable workflows.
- AI agents inside Parabola can auto-build flows — for example, creating a carrier scorecard that aggregates shipments, calculates SLA compliance, and standardizes carrier names.
- When formats change (like a new supplier template), logic can be updated instantly in plain text—no broken formulas to hunt down.
Use cases:
- Carrier scorecards
- SLA status assignment
- Parcel invoice auditing with AI-calculated distances
See how easy carrier scorecard reporting can be in Parabola below.
Cost pressures drive conservative tech investment
Most supply chain data lives in emails, PDFs, and attachments—not in clean, structured systems. Historically, this meant hours of manual copy-paste.
How Parabola enables this:
- Parabola ingests raw sources directly from email inboxes or file drops.
- AI parsing steps automatically identify shipment details, PO numbers, line items, and vendor names, standardizing them into clean tables.
- Operators can join that structured data with ERP or WMS systems, export CSVs, or trigger downstream automations.
Use cases:
- Parsing freight order emails into a TMS
- Digitizing 3PL invoices line-by-line
- Categorizing invoice line items with AI for granular spend tracking
See how easy freight order parsing can be in Parabola below.
The automation gap: Why workflow tools remain underutilized
Complexity will always exist—but teams get to choose where it sits. Parabola lets AI handle the repetitive grunt work, while humans focus on higher-order analysis.
How Parabola enables this:
- Automates repetitive tasks like reconciling inventory or validating invoices, freeing bandwidth.
- Surfaces granular data (e.g., per-3PL spend by cost category) so finance teams can focus on negotiation and forecasting.
- Provides flexibility to scale processes—operators can add new carriers or vendors without re-engineering everything.
Use cases:
- Inventory reconciliation across multiple systems
- Automated freight invoice audits
- GL classification by vendor and cost category
See how Parabola automates inventory reconciliation below.
AI adoption reaches critical mass despite skepticism
Traditional SOPs get outdated quickly. Parabola embeds live documentation directly into workflows, powered by AI.
How Parabola enables this:
- Each step in a workflow is automatically documented in plain language—no need for external Google Docs.
- Operators can ask Parabola questions like “How is data being cleaned and combined?” and receive a live explanation of the current process.
- AI can rename and organize steps into cards, making workflows self-explanatory and easy to hand off.
Use cases:
- Self-documenting inventory reconciliation flows
- On-demand process walkthroughs for new teammates
- Always-up-to-date workflow documentation as vendors or formats change
Supply chain visibility emerges as critical priority
Parabola isn’t just for one team—it’s being used across ops, supply chain, and finance to automate repetitive, high-value workflows.
How Parabola enables this:
- Provides a single canvas for both operators and finance teams to design, test, and scale processes.
- Makes AI approachable for non-technical users, with building blocks that connect email, spreadsheets, ERPs, and finance systems.
- Gives teams flexibility: they can start with a single flow (like accruals) and scale to dozens of automated processes.
Ops use cases:
- Carrier scorecards
- Inbound logistics dashboards
- Demand forecasting prep
Finance use cases:
- Month-end close acceleration (accruals, reconciliations, journal entries)
- GL mapping & variance analysis
- Expense categorization at scale
See how Parabola automates tracking inbound freight below.
The path forward
These five strategies aren’t theoretical—they’re transforming real processes today. Parabola enables operators to capture time savings, uncover hidden cost efficiencies, and scale workflows without relying on technical teams.
Whether you’re standardizing carrier data, parsing messy invoices, or cutting your time-to-close in half, Parabola is the bridge between manual work and AI-driven scale.
👉 Curious about what AI-powered workflow automation in Parabola looks like? Watch the webinar recording below!
See how your tech stack stacks up
If one thing is clear from the data we collected, it’s this: No two brands build their supply chain tech stack in exactly the same way.
The supply chain tech landscape is huge, and for every big player in the space, there are dozens of tools iterating on core capabilities; introducing AI into their offerings; and making challenges like scalability and integration easier to manage.
Between just 90 ops leaders, there were at least 10 distinct tools reflected in each category with 24 WMSs, 20 inventory and demand planning tools, and 17 PO management/shipping tools leading the pack for categories with the most competition.
There’s a lot to learn here. How are brands your size managing their returns? Are you ready for an ERP? Which tools play well with others?
Here’s what we found.
Key takeaways from tech stack data, by company size
Small companies ($1M–$10M)
Tech stack characteristics:
- ERP adoption: 66.7% → Some small companies adopt ERPs like NetSuite, but many still rely on manual processes, spreadsheets, or automation tools
- WMS usage: 75.0% → A high adoption rate, with solutions like Extensiv being more common in this segment
- Workflow automation: 100.0% → All small companies use automation tools (Zapier, Parabola, Make), as they often lack robust engineering resources
- Inventory planning: 66.7% → Over half use standalone inventory planning tools, rather than relying on an ERP
- Shipping software: 66.7% → Many use EasyPost or ShipStation instead of ERP-integrated logistics
Challenges:
- Cost sensitivity: Many cite high costs of tools (34.8%) as a challenge
- Scalability issues: 60% report difficulty scaling without an integrated ERP
- Integration frustration: 50% cite a lack of integration between their multiple systems
Mid-sized companies ($11M–$250M)
Tech stack characteristics:
- ERP adoption: 79.5% → Most companies have implemented ERPs (NetSuite is a common choice)
- WMS usage: 40.9% → Less reliance on WMS compared to smaller companies, possibly due to stronger ERP capabilities
- Workflow automation: 88.6% → Still heavily used, but slightly less than in small companies as ERPs begin taking over
- Inventory planning: 68.2% → Similar to small businesses, many mid-sized companies supplement ERPs with specialized inventory tools
- Shipping software: 72.7% → Widespread use of standalone shipping solutions, even with ERP integration
Challenges:
- Integration issues persist (42%), as ERPs do not always connect seamlessly with other tools
- Customization limitations (30%) emerge, as companies need more flexibility than what NetSuite and similar ERPs offer
- Costs remain a challenge (40%), with many citing high cost of tools
Large enterprises ($250M–$1B+)
Tech stack characteristics:
- ERP adoption: 75.0% → Most large companies use enterprise-level ERPs (e.g., Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics 365)
- WMS usage: 66.7% → Companies this size nearly always have a dedicated WMS like Oracle WMS Cloud or Blue Yonder
- Workflow automation: 83.3% → Automation is still used, but less than in smaller companies since ERP handles more integrations
- Inventory planning: 41.7% → Lower adoption of standalone inventory tools, since ERPs or WMS solutions handle these tasks
- Shipping software: 75.0% → Shipping software is still widely used, even at enterprise scale
Challenges:
- Customization limitations (50%) → Larger companies need tailored solutions, but ERP/WMS flexibility is often limited
- Implementation complexity (35%) → Rolling out ERP and WMS solutions across large teams is a major challenge
- High costs (48%) remain a common complaint, as enterprise-grade solutions are expensive
Which workflow automation tool do you use?
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When it comes to workflow automation tools, the majority of respondents currently aren’t using one, despite the frustrations we found around integration and data visibility challenges.
The majority of respondents in our survey use Parabola*, with Make, Smartsheet, and Zapier following behind.
Some additional findings:
- The only company using Alteryx has a revenue of more than $1B.
- The majority of tools that don’t use a workflow automation platform are within the $50M–$250M in revenue range.
*This survey was conducted by Parabola and distributed through Parabola’s marketing channels.
Which ERP do you use?
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The majority of respondents (36%) use NetSuite, and closely behind that at 29% are the group of respondents who don’t use an ERP.
Some additional findings:
- 40% of those who don’t use an ERP note that “difficulty in scaling as the business grows” is a challenge. Many of them are also using workflow automation tools like Parabola or Zapier, likely to combine and automate data from the various platforms they’re using in lieu of an ERP.
- 20% of those using NetSuite are “very satisfied” with their stacks, which is notably higher than companies that don’t use an ERP.
- 48% of NetSuite users report their tools are too expensive compared to 34.8% of the full pool.
Which WMS do you use?
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The majority of respondents use Extensiv (18%), with ShipHero (14%) and solutions built in-house (7%) following.
This was by far the most wide-spanning group of tools we saw in the survey: 24 different tools were reflected in the data.
Some additional findings:
- Overall, WMS users tend to have higher tech satisfaction than those who don’t use a WMS (15% were “very satisfied” with their tech stack in general, compared to 7% of the full response pool).
- WMS users are more likely to adopt inventory planning tools (78% of those with a WMS also have an inventory planning tool vs. 65% of all respondents).
Which inventory and demand planning tools do you use?
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While 57% of respondents do not use any inventory and demand planning tools, there was a wide range of technology reflected here. 5% of respondents report using Fuse Inventory, with 3% using Atomic, Fishbowl, Netstock, and Singuli.
Some additional findings:
- For small and mid-sized businesses, 67% and 68% of respondents respectively use demand planning tools of some kind.
- In comparison, only 42% of enterprise respondents use standalone inventory planning tools. This might suggest that enterprises rely more on ERP-based inventory solutions, as opposed to separate tools.
- Inventory tool users rely on WMS, post-purchase, and fraud management tools more often, suggesting that inventory tools are part of a broader operational tech stack.
Which post-purchasing software do you use?
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The majority of respondents (29%) use Loop Returns, with Happy Returns following at 6%.
Some additional findings:
- 57.5% of post-purchasing tool users also have a WMS, compared to only 33% of non-users. This may indicate that companies with structured warehouse operations are more likely to invest in post-purchasing solutions.
- 71% of post-purchase users also have inventory planning tools, compared to only 11% of non-users. This reinforces the idea that post-purchasing software is part of a broader inventory and fulfillment tech stack.
- Post-purchasing tool users are 6.4x more likely to have a fraud management platform, highlighting a connection between post-purchase experience and fraud prevention strategies.
Which fraud management tool do you use?
The majority of respondents (46%) report that they don’t use a fraud management tool. Among those that do, NoFraud and Chargeflow are the most commonly used platforms.
Some additional findings:
- Fraud prevention is a mid-market priority. 36% of fraud tool users fall within the $50M–$250M revenue range, while only 16% are small businesses.
- Fraud and inventory accuracy are closely linked. 74% of fraud software users also use inventory planning tools, compared to only 48% of non-fraud users.
- Post-purchase and fraud detection go hand in hand. 98% of fraud tool users also use post-purchasing solutions, vs. 74% of those without fraud management software.
Which shipping software do you use?
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The majority of respondents use ShipStation (15%), followed by EasyPost (8%), ProShip (7%), and Shippo (7%).
Some additional findings:
- Shipping software users are more likely to rely on automation. 94% of shipping software users also use workflow automation, compared to 86% of non-users.
- Post-purchase software and shipping solutions are often paired together. 96% of shipping software users also use post-purchasing tools, compared to 73% of those without shipping software.
- Fraud prevention is more common among shipping software users. 73% also have a fraud management solution, while only 41% of non-users do.
Which PO management tool do you use?
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While 55% of respondents don’t currently use a PO management tool, 11% use Anvyl and 8% use NetSuite.
Some additional findings:
- PO management software is a mid-market necessity. 31% of users fall within the $50M–$250M revenue range, suggesting that purchase order complexity and vendor management challenges intensify at this stage.
- PO management users are far more likely to integrate fraud prevention.76.4% of PO software users also have fraud management tools, compared to just 47.1% of non-users, indicating that businesses leveraging PO software are thinking beyond procurement and into risk mitigation.