The global retail sourcing and procurement market is expected to reach USD 2.74 billion by 2025, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. Increasing centralization in procurement processes and better visibility in sourcing related data has been a major factor driving market growth. In addition, recent development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and Internet of Things (IoT) and its implementation across retail procurement processes also paved the way for greater development of retail software and solutions.

With rise of internet shopping and major shifts in consumer buying patterns, different trends are re-shaping the retail industry in the last few years. With a cutthroat competition, retailers are struggling to maintain and find profitability, thus, initiating them to take a defensive stance. Rising expenses, loss of sales productivity, and real-time buying trends are indulging retail businesses to adopt sourcing and procurement tools in order to cope up with the customer demand. Moreover, retailers need to look at their cost structures in order to decide their staffing, pricing, and operations.

Retail and procurement consulting was the largest service category in 2016 and is expected to maintain a comparatively low growth rate over the forecast period. It constituted with a share of about 38% in 2016. Cloud deployment in retail sourcing and procurement is expected to observe the fastest growth over the next nine years with an estimated CAGR of around 12.1% from 2017 to 2025. Procurement cloud helps to streamline source-to-pay process through social collaboration and automation, thus, achieving high margins by controlling costs. Additionally, cloud based software supports seamless accessibility without additional IT effort to the device.