Welcome to the Retail Supply Chain Innovation Flywheel!

This blog was contributed by Jeff Ashcroft, KNNX Corp.

By [ Jeff Ashcroft ]
02/26/2025

If there's two words I'd use to describe the RILA LINK 2025 Retail Supply Chain Conference, which just wrapped up in Orlando last week, they would be "innovation acceleration."

Key to this observation is the impact of the new RILA LINK Hosted Meetings Program, which from my viewpoint was a resounding success! Each of these one-on-one meet ups helped boost the speed of the innovation flywheel.

In its inaugural year, the Program had 400 participants and facilitated over 1100 meetings between retailers and solution providers.

Retail supply chain innovation has been near and dear to my heart since I began attending the RILA, then IMRA supply chain event in 1989 and my mercenary approach to retail supply chain innovation is highlighted in "Never Let Them Tell You it Can't Be Done!"

In advance of this year's RILA LINK 2025 event I shared my RILA LINK Preview: Top Trends for 2025 Are True Gamechangers article and clearly these resonated with bookings for all 20 of our Hosted Meetings on Perfect Freight Invoicing and Transportation Spend Risk. We likely could have booked 20 more had we the bandwidth to accommodate, noting this for next year! For those of you unable to secure a meeting, feel free to reach out here and please see below the many benefits of Perfect Freight Invoicing and the numerous hidden risk exposures we address in every Shippers transportation spend.

There are many benefits available to both Shippers and Carriers from Perfect Freight Invoicing:

Recent Shipper incidents are only the tip of the iceberg of Transport Spend Risk:

Incredible as it may seem, all 20 of our Hosted Meetings at RILA LINK 2025 were positive, enjoyable and are moving forward to next steps, which is a truly incredible result!

On the first day, another long term RILA LINK attendee shared with me that he actually came into these meetings with a feeling of trepidation, but in the end he shared that he both enjoyed and learned something new from EVERY meeting he had that day!
Another trend noted across all 20 of our Hosted Meetings was that all retailers we met with were unhappy with legacy Freight Audit & Pay (FAP) solutions which Perfect Freight Invoicing can now easily replace and/or compliment.
Most attendees we met shared that there are many valuable supply chain resources being applied to manual steps in the invoice process (e.g. managing steps, reporting, etc. with Excel and email), hindering support of strategic objectives, like the tariff situation. After explaining that Perfect Freight Invoicing provides complete visibility via a single shared invoice for both the Shipper and Carrier, everyone was happy and agreed to learn more.

The retail supply chain innovation flywheel is powered by ideas, technology and solutions but most importantly, people. Whenever you begin planning for next year's RILA LINK 2026 event from Feb 1st to 4th, 2026, whether retailer or vendor, I would absolutely recommend you make the Hosted Meetings program a key part of your plan.

For retailers you may wish to consider using the RILA 2026 Free Ticket & Travel Credit to also bring a number of your up-and-coming star team members to the event to both grow their outlook, learning and innovation skills and prepare them for ever more senior roles.

For vendors, I have to say the RILA LINK Hosted Meetings Program is an opportunity not to be missed to easily and successfully meet with retailers who are actively sourcing or at early interest stages for the technology or other supply chain solutions you offer.

The speed at which retail supply chains are moving, evolving and being disrupted continues to accelerate. In order for professionals and organizations to keep up, it will require finding and adopting rapid innovations available from the ever-accelerating Retail Supply Chain Innovation Flywheel!

Cheers,
Jeff Ashcroft