At London Tech Week (LTW), we heard how retailers are moving beyond the era of supply chain visibility and are increasingly gearing their operations towards AI-powered orchestration, predictive decision-making and real-time responsiveness.

During the opening retail technology panel at LTW 2026, Holland & Barrett’s Vineta Bajaj, Estée Lauder’s Jamal Chamariq and FedEx Dataworks’ Tony Kreager joined Customer Whisperer, Kate Hardcastle MBE, to discuss how retailers are adapting their value chains to cope with growing volatility, social-media-driven demand spikes and increasingly complex fulfilment networks.

From visibility to orchestrated action

Visibility has long been the mantra of supply chain success, as retailers sought to break down silos, connect workflows and create a unified view of their end-to-end operations.

But retailers are now entering a new phase of value chain optimisation, where the ability to act on insights matters more than simply generating them.

Tony Kreager, Chief Engineering and Commercial Officer at FedEx Dataworks, described how retailers are moving beyond the “age of visibility”, which has shaped supply chain strategy for the best part of a decade. What was once a focus on building control towers and dashboards to surface operational issues is now evolving into a drive to act on those insights, enabling faster, more intelligent decision-making.

“I think what we’ve seen with agentic AI is retailers asking, ‘How do I action that visibility?’, whether that’s rerouting inventory, changing fulfilment locations or adjusting logistics strategies dynamically. It’s going from insight, intelligence, and then orchestrated action.”

This was echoed by Jamal Chamariq, Estée Lauder’s Senior VP of Global Supply Chain, who described AI as an “augmentation tool” that the cosmetics business is using to move beyond traditional reporting and scenario modelling.

“Forget about the reports, because you can get millions out of AI. It’s how do we use those reports to start accelerating the transformation.”

The next frontier, Kreager suggested, will rely on treating supply chain data and insights as a strategic asset rather than simply a source of reporting, while recognising supply chains as interconnected systems rather than isolated functions.

“You’re not going to get a whole lot of value by trying to optimise a piece of a system. Supply chains are end-to-end systems.”

For retailers, he advocates shifting focus away from optimising individual processes and towards orchestrating the underlying relationships between them, enabling faster and more coordinated responses to disruption, demand fluctuations and operational challenges.

Forecasting in an era of volatility

Navigating growing volatility across consumer demand, trading conditions and logistics networks was another key theme explored by the panel. From geopolitical tensions to social-media-driven product virality, retailers are increasingly looking to predictive data, AI and demand sensing tools to improve forecasting accuracy and respond more quickly to disruption.

For beauty brands, Chamariq said social media has fundamentally altered forecasting models, with viral products triggering sudden demand surges.  He described how this is particularly pronounced among key categories as well as some of Estée Lauder’s iconic products, like MAC lipsticks.

“It takes one influencer starting talking about it to go viral, and demand goes through the roof.”

Separate research from invent.ai released earlier this week showed that social media virality was increasingly impacting stock availability and straining inventory systems.  Six in ten (59%) consumers say viral social trends cause items to sell out faster than they used to, while over half (53%) say influencers and content creators now accelerate how quickly products disappear from shelves.

As a result, retailers are increasingly combining social listening, demand sensing and predictive analytics to identify trends earlier and position inventory accordingly.

Vineta Bajaj, Group CFO at Holland & Barrett, added that similar dynamics exist across Health & Wellness – a category that’s particularly susceptible to influencer trends and social media whims.  However, for Bajaj, the challenge is not just about reacting to demand spikes, but in ensuring those anomalies don’t distort longer-term forecasting.

“The second part is making sure that that sudden uplift isn’t built into the [forecasting] data 12 months from now,” she said.

Culture remains critical in supply chain evolution

Despite the advancements promised by agentic AI and autonomous decision making, the panellists were united in their view that technology alone is not enough.  Data quality, organisational trust and change management remain some of the biggest determinants of successful supply chain transformation.

“If your data isn’t right, it will be super hard,” said Chamariq. “It’s the old adage of ‘garbage in, garbage out’… you have to be able to trust the outputs.”

Confidence in AI-generated outputs can help remove natural human bias from operational decision-making, Bajaj added, forcing people to make decisions based on evidence rather than instinct.

“A human gut feeling will disrupt the quality of the data due to their bias,” she said.

Putting the ‘value’ in the value chain

The panel concluded that one of the biggest evolutions in supply chain strategy may be one of perception. Supply chains can no longer be viewed simply as operational cost centres; they must increasingly be recognised as creators of value.

“The more you can get your organisation to see supply chain as a value deliverer, not a cost of goods, the better chance you’re going to have of actually transforming it,” Kreager said.