Earnings Season Made It Clear: Digitize Supply Chains or Fall Behind

As global trade shifts under the weight of ongoing uncertainty and geopolitical strain, knowing where goods are, what condition they are in, and how quickly they can move has become a strategic capability, not just an operational one.

From FedEx to Caterpillar, Dollar General, Ahold Delhaize and beyond, companies across logistics, industrials, retail and infrastructure used their most recent earnings presentations, most reporting their fourth-quarter 2025 and full-year financials, to stress to investors that supply chain digitization is no longer being treated as an efficiency play but as core operating capacity.

What stood out in earnings calls was not simply continued spending on logistics technology, but the rationale behind it. Companies described investments in data capture, orchestration software and automation as necessary to support growth itself.

Historically, supply chain improvements followed expansion. Firms optimized after scaling. Today, the digital supply chain is increasingly a prerequisite to scaling at all.

Taken together, the bulk of the quarter’s executive commentary reflected a newly fragmented economy in which volatility is assumed to be permanent rather than episodic, and across which real-time, data-driven intelligence and automation represent not spear-tip innovations but operational table stakes for 21st-century supply chains, no matter the industry.

Read also: CFOs Rewrote the Playbook on Supply Chain Risk in 2025

Supply Chain Tech Spending Surges as Companies Prepare for 2026

For much of the past decade, supply chain digitization lived in the category of productivity improvement. Companies pursued tracking systems, warehouse automation, or predictive analytics primarily to squeeze out costs or shorten cycle times.

That’s no longer the case. As executives spoke to investors about their 2025 capital expenditures and their 2026 roadmaps, supply chain expenditures were increasingly framed less as discretionary IT projects and more as durable infrastructure, comparable to upgrading fleets or building new facilities.

Three main themes emerged from the investor calls:

1. Capex is shifting upstream.
   Companies are investing in supplier integration, tracking and orchestration layers beyond just warehouses.
2. The AI boom is inseparable from supply chain redesign.
   Infrastructure, retail and logistics players are building the physical backbone required for AI-driven commerce.
3. Competitive advantage is migrating to execution certainty.
   Firms able to promise delivery timelines, inventory accuracy and responsiveness are finding they can win contracts in volatile markets.

These marketplace-level trends increasingly align with how companies now view risk. If disruption is constant, then resilience must be engineered continuously.

UPS’ Network of the Future initiative puts an exclamation point on logistics’ emerging digital reality.

“How are we adding this productivity? Automation,” UPS CEO Carol Tomé said during the company’s Jan. 27 investor earnings call. “The cost-per-piece is 28% less in our automated facilities than our traditional ones. We are investing into capabilities that are turning into wins.”

“Customers want better order-to-cash visibility, and our smart logistics is giving it to them, which is allowing us to earn new commercial business,” she added.

See also: Predictive Analytics, Not Inventory, Becomes Front Line for Supply Chain Resilience

Companies Across Sectors Recast Themselves as Technology Platforms

Another theme from earnings season was the repositioning of firms toward becoming intelligence layers in and of themselves. Companies are increasingly presenting themselves not just as carriers of goods but as providers of data infrastructure and analytics platforms that help customers manage complexity.

This evolution reflects customer demand. Businesses navigating omnichannel commerce, distributed manufacturing and regionalized sourcing need orchestration partners capable of managing data flows as much as physical flows.

CarGurus announced Thursday (Feb. 19) during its fourth-quarter earnings call that it is stepping back from transactional businesses like CarOffer to concentrate on being a data-driven marketplace and software platform for dealers, not a digital car seller.

During Yum Brands’ Feb. 5 earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Ranjith Roy described Byte by Yum as “the only multi-brand, multi-market QSR technology platform built by restaurant operators for restaurant operators.”

Procter & Gamble is using data and technology to support its work toward an improvement in near-term results and a long-term reinvention of the company, President and CEO Shailesh Jejurikar said during a Jan. 22 earnings call.

On its latest earnings call, held Jan. 29, Caterpillar described customers deploying machines, engines and services as long-lived infrastructure rather than short-cycle construction assets.

And as FedEx executives stressed on the company’s second-quarter 2026 earnings call, while the previous era of logistics was defined by reach, the next could reward those that compete on intelligence.

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