Why organizations struggle to build confidence in supply chain integrity

A strong supply chain ensures the right goods are available at the right time, in the right place, and in the right quantities. An effective supply chain strengthens everything from customer loyalty and company reputation to market resilience and consumer safety. But supply chains are notoriously vulnerable to costly disruption, tampering, and theft. In today’s world of rapidly shifting consumer demands, ensuring supply chain integrity is critical to maintaining a healthy supply chain, which can mean the difference between keeping pace with and falling behind the competition.

Impinj surveyed 1,000 US supply chain professionals across a variety of industries for its Supply Chain Integrity Outlook 2025 report. We defined supply chain integrity as the reliability, security, and accuracy of all elements within the supply chain, ensuring that products and services are delivered as intended. We discovered that integrity matters a great deal to supply chain leaders. But there’s also a glaring supply chain data accuracy gap that could mean significant headaches for organizations in 2025.

Supply chain managers facing data blind spot

More than nine out of 10 supply chain managers believe they are equipped to achieve accurate, 360°, real-time inventory visibility, yet just 33% consistently do so. This data blind spot affects the ability to make the informed, data-driven decisions necessary to optimize inventory, boost efficiency, and lower costs.

As a result, many companies are struggling to reach the level of insights, visibility, and accuracy required to support supply chain integrity and respond quickly to demand, leading to system-wide impacts across a range of issues, including counterfeiting, theft, sustainability, and the effective use of AI across the supply chain.

Disruption from viral trends

Viral trends can be a boon to retailers by driving increased sales. But they become a headache for supply chain leaders when they lack visibility into the goods in their supply chain. As a result, more than half of supply chain leaders say they face challenges in responding quickly to shifting demand. They’re also struggling to keep pace with changes in customer shopping habits and demand driven by popular online storefronts like Facebook Marketplace and Instagram Shops. Rapid peaks in customer demand, driven by viral trends, can happen without warning, potentially putting organizations without real-time inventory insights on the back foot.

Effective AI strategies require accurate data

AI has the potential to revolutionize supply chains. Think efficiency, real-time decision-making, and predictive analytics for inventory management. But effective AI strategies are built on accurate data.

In the survey, inaccurate data is the most frequently cited obstacle to implementing AI for supply chain improvements, followed by data availability and real-time data access. These findings emphasize the need to correct supply chain inaccuracies now, giving supply chain leaders a solid foundation for adopting AI and other groundbreaking future innovations that rely on good data.

Fighting faux merchandise, shrink, and theft

Most respondents, particularly in retail (65%), say they are plagued with counterfeit goods in the supply chain, regardless of the size of their business. Reducing shrink and theft is also a challenge for most (60%) organizations. These remain systemic issues for supply chain leaders, particularly those in the food, grocery, and restaurant sector, where 82% report challenges reducing shrink.

Improving supply chain sustainability

Supply chain managers are under pressure to reduce the environmental impact of their operations. Over a quarter of respondents report difficulties in reducing the environmental impact of their organization’s supply chain, while nearly half (49%) are concerned about meeting the EU’s upcoming Digital Product Passport (DPP) mandate.

A scattershot approach to addressing supply chain integrity

Almost all supply chain professionals surveyed say they plan to invest in improving their organization’s supply chain in the next year. However, the best course of action may not be obvious, which is why many respondents are attempting a mix of strategies.

Retail supply managers are adopting new technologies for the authentication of goods in transit and general goods verification, and they’re introducing more authentication checkpoints throughout the supply chain. Meanwhile, the food sector is looking to technology for shopfloor surveillance and food waste reduction. To improve sustainability, respondents across sectors cite several strategies, including measurement of their sustainability efforts and improving last-mile delivery efficiency.

This scattershot approach may portend an underlying problem: putting narrowly scoped measures into practice could contribute to the general lack of real-time visibility and data accuracy.

Real-time visibility can bridge the gap

Supply chain integrity matters. Without it, supply chains become insecure and unreliable. Our research shows a pressing need for organizations to address data accuracy gaps for greater supply chain – and business — resiliency.

Visibility into everything that enters and moves through a supply chain can have enormous positive impact, delivering real-time insights that help organizations power more robust forecasting and decision-making for a nimbler response to supply chain stressors. Technologies like RAIN RFID are helping supply chain managers drive more accurate data insights to power everything from supply chain automation and AI to advanced anti-counterfeiting, loss prevention and shipment planning.

As today’s supply chains face increasing threats from climate change, geopolitical instability, and constantly changing consumer tastes, unaddressed supply chain data gaps are a growing liability that organizations cannot afford to ignore.

Jeff Dossett is Chief Revenue Officer at Impinj