IDC MarketScape: Worldwide AI-Enabled Order Orchestration and Fulfillment Applications for Retail and B2C 2026 Vendor Assessment
SAP is recognized as a leader in IDC's worldwide AI-enabled order orchestration and fulfillment for retail and B2C. Their cloud-native, API-first architecture supports real-time data flows, enabling efficient order management across channels. Key strengths include intuitive UI, responsive support, and strong integration with SAP systems, though improvements are needed in virtual inventory management. Download the DocumentJuly 2026, IDC #US53010725e
IDC MarketScape
IDC MarketScape: Worldwide AI-Enabled Order
Orchestration and Fulfillment Applications for Retail and
B2C 2026 Vendor Assessment
Ornella Urso
THIS EXCERPT FEATURES SAP AS A LEADER
IDC MARKETSCAPE FIGURE
FIGURE 1
IDC MarketScape Worldwide AI-enabled order orchestration and fulfillment
applications for retail and B2C vendor assessment
Source: IDC, 2026
IDC MarketScape
IDC MarketScape: Worldwide AI-Enabled Order
Orchestration and Fulfillment Applications for Retail and
B2C 2026 Vendor Assessment
Ornella Urso
THIS EXCERPT FEATURES SAP AS A LEADER
IDC MARKETSCAPE FIGURE
FIGURE 1
IDC MarketScape Worldwide AI-enabled order orchestration and fulfillment
applications for retail and B2C vendor assessment
Source: IDC, 2026
©2026 IDC #US53010725e 2
Please see the Appendix for detailed methodology, market definition and scoring criteria.
ABOUT THIS EXCRPT
The content for this excerpt was taken directly from IDC MarketScape: Worldwide AI-
Enabled Order Orchestration and Fulfillment Applications for Retail and B2C 2026
Vendor Assessment (Doc # US53010725).
IDC OPINION
Order orchestration and fulfillment has become the coordination layer of unified
commerce. The order that once ended at a register now begins on a product page,
moves across stores, ecommerce, marketplaces, and direct channels, and continues
past delivery into modification and returns. As that path has lengthened, the order
management system (OMS) has absorbed decisions that move both margin and
customer experience: which inventory to expose to which channel, where to source each
order, how to weigh delivery speed against cost to serve, and how to handle changes
and returns. Those decisions were once downstream and largely manual. Today, they
have to be made continuously, against demand and inventory that move by the hour,
and they determine whether a retailer can keep the availability and delivery promises it
makes at the point of sale without eroding margin. Order management has, in effect,
become the operational center of how retailers turn demand into profitable, fulfilled
orders.
The central requirement emerging from this research is alignment. To serve customers
consistently across channels, a retailer's operations, inventory, and fulfillment must
operate from a single, current view of demand and supply rather than channel-specific
silos. This is the practical meaning of unified commerce: order management, inventory,
store systems, and fulfillment execution operating on shared, real-time data so that a
promise made to a customer in one channel holds across all of them. The most common
gap retailers report stands directly in the way of this. In IDC's Retail Technologies and
Business Process Trends Survey, 2026, real-time, network-wide inventory visibility is the
most-cited supply chain challenge, and missed sales from inventory inaccuracy rank
equally high. Without a unified data foundation, even capable orchestration cannot adapt
to changing demand.
This is the direction the market is moving. IDC expects order management to shift from a
transaction engine toward an adaptive orchestration layer that coordinates ecommerce,
warehouse, and logistics systems in near real time, with AI handling a growing share of
routine order-life-cycle decisions and reserving human judgment for exceptions.
Technology providers' activity reflects that shift, with agentic-enabled capabilities
described across order routing, sourcing, and exception handling, and with returns and
reverse logistics treated as part of the same orchestrated cycle rather than an
afterthought. The maturity of these capabilities varies widely, and many remain closer to
Please see the Appendix for detailed methodology, market definition and scoring criteria.
ABOUT THIS EXCRPT
The content for this excerpt was taken directly from IDC MarketScape: Worldwide AI-
Enabled Order Orchestration and Fulfillment Applications for Retail and B2C 2026
Vendor Assessment (Doc # US53010725).
IDC OPINION
Order orchestration and fulfillment has become the coordination layer of unified
commerce. The order that once ended at a register now begins on a product page,
moves across stores, ecommerce, marketplaces, and direct channels, and continues
past delivery into modification and returns. As that path has lengthened, the order
management system (OMS) has absorbed decisions that move both margin and
customer experience: which inventory to expose to which channel, where to source each
order, how to weigh delivery speed against cost to serve, and how to handle changes
and returns. Those decisions were once downstream and largely manual. Today, they
have to be made continuously, against demand and inventory that move by the hour,
and they determine whether a retailer can keep the availability and delivery promises it
makes at the point of sale without eroding margin. Order management has, in effect,
become the operational center of how retailers turn demand into profitable, fulfilled
orders.
The central requirement emerging from this research is alignment. To serve customers
consistently across channels, a retailer's operations, inventory, and fulfillment must
operate from a single, current view of demand and supply rather than channel-specific
silos. This is the practical meaning of unified commerce: order management, inventory,
store systems, and fulfillment execution operating on shared, real-time data so that a
promise made to a customer in one channel holds across all of them. The most common
gap retailers report stands directly in the way of this. In IDC's Retail Technologies and
Business Process Trends Survey, 2026, real-time, network-wide inventory visibility is the
most-cited supply chain challenge, and missed sales from inventory inaccuracy rank
equally high. Without a unified data foundation, even capable orchestration cannot adapt
to changing demand.
This is the direction the market is moving. IDC expects order management to shift from a
transaction engine toward an adaptive orchestration layer that coordinates ecommerce,
warehouse, and logistics systems in near real time, with AI handling a growing share of
routine order-life-cycle decisions and reserving human judgment for exceptions.
Technology providers' activity reflects that shift, with agentic-enabled capabilities
described across order routing, sourcing, and exception handling, and with returns and
reverse logistics treated as part of the same orchestrated cycle rather than an
afterthought. The maturity of these capabilities varies widely, and many remain closer to
©2026 IDC #US53010725e 3
road map than to production, so buyers should weigh demonstrated outcomes against
stated vision.
The purpose of this alignment is a customer-centric operation that adapts to real
demand. Consumers expect accurate availability and delivery options before they buy,
the ability to change or return an order afterward, and consistent treatment across
whichever channels they use. Stores are part of this as both a primary selling channel
and a fulfillment node, but they are one node within a broader network rather than the
center of it; the harder problem is coordinating stores, distribution centers, marketplaces,
and dropship sources against a single picture of demand. Technology providers
approach this from different starting points, including ecommerce, supply chain
execution, point of sale, and warehouse and transportation management, and they serve
very different categories and order volumes.
For this assessment, IDC fielded a buyer survey, reviewed detailed vendor RFI
submissions, and spoke with retail customer references. The research points to a market
in which composable, microservices-based architecture has become a baseline
expectation, unified data platforms are becoming the foundation for end-to-end visibility,
and AI is moving from experimentation toward measurable value in order decisioning.
For retailers, the implication is that order management can no longer be evaluated as a
contained application. Its value now depends on how tightly it connects commerce,
inventory, store, and logistics systems and how quickly it can turn a shift in demand into
a fulfillment decision that holds up on cost and service. That is the lens IDC applied in
assessing the vendors in this study, and the one buyers should bring to their own
selection.
This IDC MarketScape is intended as an entry point in a buyer's due diligence as they
look for the application or suite of solutions that best fits their specific needs.
Requirements differ by retailer size and brand segment, and the technology providers
assessed reach this market from different origins and serve different levels of complexity.
IDC MARKETSCAPE VENDOR INCLUSION CRITERIA
The goal of this IDC MarketScape project is to assess vendors with notable capability in
order orchestration and fulfillment applications for retail and B2C business. The following
criteria were used to guide inclusion in this research.
▪ Vendors must have at least 10 retail clients of their order orchestration and
fulfillment solution.
▪ Vendors must have core capabilities, including managing the order, distributing it
to specific locations within an organization's fulfillment network, and fulfilling the
order.
▪ Order orchestration and fulfillment must be able to be purchased separately from
other applications in a vendor's portfolio; it cannot be inseparable from other
applications, such as ecommerce or enterprise resource planning (ERP).
road map than to production, so buyers should weigh demonstrated outcomes against
stated vision.
The purpose of this alignment is a customer-centric operation that adapts to real
demand. Consumers expect accurate availability and delivery options before they buy,
the ability to change or return an order afterward, and consistent treatment across
whichever channels they use. Stores are part of this as both a primary selling channel
and a fulfillment node, but they are one node within a broader network rather than the
center of it; the harder problem is coordinating stores, distribution centers, marketplaces,
and dropship sources against a single picture of demand. Technology providers
approach this from different starting points, including ecommerce, supply chain
execution, point of sale, and warehouse and transportation management, and they serve
very different categories and order volumes.
For this assessment, IDC fielded a buyer survey, reviewed detailed vendor RFI
submissions, and spoke with retail customer references. The research points to a market
in which composable, microservices-based architecture has become a baseline
expectation, unified data platforms are becoming the foundation for end-to-end visibility,
and AI is moving from experimentation toward measurable value in order decisioning.
For retailers, the implication is that order management can no longer be evaluated as a
contained application. Its value now depends on how tightly it connects commerce,
inventory, store, and logistics systems and how quickly it can turn a shift in demand into
a fulfillment decision that holds up on cost and service. That is the lens IDC applied in
assessing the vendors in this study, and the one buyers should bring to their own
selection.
This IDC MarketScape is intended as an entry point in a buyer's due diligence as they
look for the application or suite of solutions that best fits their specific needs.
Requirements differ by retailer size and brand segment, and the technology providers
assessed reach this market from different origins and serve different levels of complexity.
IDC MARKETSCAPE VENDOR INCLUSION CRITERIA
The goal of this IDC MarketScape project is to assess vendors with notable capability in
order orchestration and fulfillment applications for retail and B2C business. The following
criteria were used to guide inclusion in this research.
▪ Vendors must have at least 10 retail clients of their order orchestration and
fulfillment solution.
▪ Vendors must have core capabilities, including managing the order, distributing it
to specific locations within an organization's fulfillment network, and fulfilling the
order.
▪ Order orchestration and fulfillment must be able to be purchased separately from
other applications in a vendor's portfolio; it cannot be inseparable from other
applications, such as ecommerce or enterprise resource planning (ERP).
©2026 IDC #US53010725e 4
ADVICE FOR TECHNOLOGY BUYERS
Retailers seeking to modernize their order orchestration and fulfillment processes should
consider the following:
▪ Put profitability and cost-to-serve at the center of orchestration decisions.
Omni-channel fulfillment is expensive, and the cost pressure has grown. In IDC's
2026 survey, shipping and last-mile delivery costs (30.6%) and the volume and
speed of returns (26.7%) rank among the most-cited supply chain challenges, and
operational efficiency drives roughly one in five omni-channel investment
decisions. Buyers should look for orchestration that can weigh inventory
monetization, allocation, and routing, returns, and the full set of fulfillment costs,
and that can optimize for what matters most across products, locations, and
consumers. The same logic should govern which delivery and fulfillment options
are exposed to consumers during browsing and checkout.
▪ Extend orchestration across the full customer journey, before and after purchase.
▪ Prepurchase. Consumers expect to know quantity, location, speed, and
pickup options from the start of browsing. About one-third of retailers in the
2026 survey cite friction in omni-channel fulfillment as an urgent customer
experience problem, and the inability to anticipate demand and intent in real
time is close behind. Buyers should look for intelligent order promising and
dynamic inventory visibility that can expose accurate availability early and at
scale, including in-transit inventory, which can lift conversion by making more
stock available to promise.
▪ Post-purchase. The order cycle does not end at checkout. Consumers want
to track orders, change products or fulfillment, cancel, switch payment, and
return items. Buyers should look for tools that give customer service
representatives a single view of orders, inventory, and customers, and that
increasingly let consumers manage these events themselves. Self-service is
shifting toward AI-assisted and agentic interactions that can act on an order,
not just describe its status, but buyers should confirm what is in production
rather than planned.
▪ Fix inventory placement and network-wide visibility first. Even strong
orchestration is limited when inventory sits in the wrong place. Lack of real-time,
network-wide inventory visibility (32.9%) and missed sales from inventory
inaccuracy (32.9%) are the most-cited gaps in the 2026 survey. Buyers should
look for dynamic inventory balancing, safety-stock adjustment, and allocation that
aligns with expected demand by SKU, and should ask vendors how demand
signals feed back into planning for continued improvement.
▪ Equip the store as a fulfillment node without compromising the store. Stores
now carry picking, packing, BOPIS, curbside, lockers, returns, and ship-from-store
alongside traditional selling, and managing the store as both selling space and
fulfillment center is a top operational challenge for retailers. Buyers should look for
ADVICE FOR TECHNOLOGY BUYERS
Retailers seeking to modernize their order orchestration and fulfillment processes should
consider the following:
▪ Put profitability and cost-to-serve at the center of orchestration decisions.
Omni-channel fulfillment is expensive, and the cost pressure has grown. In IDC's
2026 survey, shipping and last-mile delivery costs (30.6%) and the volume and
speed of returns (26.7%) rank among the most-cited supply chain challenges, and
operational efficiency drives roughly one in five omni-channel investment
decisions. Buyers should look for orchestration that can weigh inventory
monetization, allocation, and routing, returns, and the full set of fulfillment costs,
and that can optimize for what matters most across products, locations, and
consumers. The same logic should govern which delivery and fulfillment options
are exposed to consumers during browsing and checkout.
▪ Extend orchestration across the full customer journey, before and after purchase.
▪ Prepurchase. Consumers expect to know quantity, location, speed, and
pickup options from the start of browsing. About one-third of retailers in the
2026 survey cite friction in omni-channel fulfillment as an urgent customer
experience problem, and the inability to anticipate demand and intent in real
time is close behind. Buyers should look for intelligent order promising and
dynamic inventory visibility that can expose accurate availability early and at
scale, including in-transit inventory, which can lift conversion by making more
stock available to promise.
▪ Post-purchase. The order cycle does not end at checkout. Consumers want
to track orders, change products or fulfillment, cancel, switch payment, and
return items. Buyers should look for tools that give customer service
representatives a single view of orders, inventory, and customers, and that
increasingly let consumers manage these events themselves. Self-service is
shifting toward AI-assisted and agentic interactions that can act on an order,
not just describe its status, but buyers should confirm what is in production
rather than planned.
▪ Fix inventory placement and network-wide visibility first. Even strong
orchestration is limited when inventory sits in the wrong place. Lack of real-time,
network-wide inventory visibility (32.9%) and missed sales from inventory
inaccuracy (32.9%) are the most-cited gaps in the 2026 survey. Buyers should
look for dynamic inventory balancing, safety-stock adjustment, and allocation that
aligns with expected demand by SKU, and should ask vendors how demand
signals feed back into planning for continued improvement.
▪ Equip the store as a fulfillment node without compromising the store. Stores
now carry picking, packing, BOPIS, curbside, lockers, returns, and ship-from-store
alongside traditional selling, and managing the store as both selling space and
fulfillment center is a top operational challenge for retailers. Buyers should look for
©2026 IDC #US53010725e 5
store fulfillment applications that are easy for associates to use on a single mobile
device and that support functions such as pick-and-pack workflows and
department-level picking. Poor in-store inventory accuracy undermines even good
workflows, which is why investment in RFID for item-level visibility (48.8%) and
mobile tools for frontline staff (42.2%) ranks high in current plans.
▪ Treat AI, and especially agentic AI, as a capability to verify rather than a
claim to trust. Interest is high: 51.7% of retailers report they have already
invested in agentic AI, and most of the remainder plan to, with intended use cases
concentrated in demand forecasting and replenishment, customer service
resolution, and order promising and fulfillment. Vendor submissions reflect this,
with AI features described across order capture, validation, routing, store
brokering, exception management, and returns. Buyers should separate
production capability from road map, ask for reference evidence, and weigh the
operational and governance implications of agents that take action on live orders.
▪ Require composable architecture and configurable change. Every retailer is
different, and the market keeps moving, so out-of-the-box coverage is rarely
enough. Buyers should look for extensibility through no- and low-code
configuration that line-of-business teams can manage, and for microservices that
can be adopted modularly and added to existing order management rather than
requiring a full suite at once. Buyers should also ask how the platform supports
agility under sourcing and tariff volatility, and how quickly fulfillment rules can be
changed during peak periods.
VENDOR SUMMARY PROFILES
This section briefly explains IDC's key observations resulting in a vendor's position in the
IDC MarketScape. While every vendor is evaluated against the criteria outlined in the
Appendix, this description provides a summary of each vendor's strengths and
opportunities.
SAP
After a thorough evaluation of SAP's strategies and capabilities, IDC has positioned the
company in the Leaders category within this IDC MarketScape for worldwide AI-enabled
order orchestration and fulfillment applications for retail and B2C.
SAP is a global enterprise software provider based in Walldorf, Germany, delivering
order management capabilities through SAP Order Management Services, a suite
comprising SAP Order Management Foundation, SAP Order Management for Sourcing
and Availability, and SAP Omni-channel Sales Transfer and Audit. The suite is built on a
cloud-native, API-first, event-driven microservices architecture designed for composable,
modular integration across SAP and non-SAP technology ecosystems. SAP employs
approximately 109,000 people worldwide, delivers its OMS suite exclusively as a cloud
SaaS subscription, and offers modular per-component pricing enabling organizations to
adopt capabilities selectively.
store fulfillment applications that are easy for associates to use on a single mobile
device and that support functions such as pick-and-pack workflows and
department-level picking. Poor in-store inventory accuracy undermines even good
workflows, which is why investment in RFID for item-level visibility (48.8%) and
mobile tools for frontline staff (42.2%) ranks high in current plans.
▪ Treat AI, and especially agentic AI, as a capability to verify rather than a
claim to trust. Interest is high: 51.7% of retailers report they have already
invested in agentic AI, and most of the remainder plan to, with intended use cases
concentrated in demand forecasting and replenishment, customer service
resolution, and order promising and fulfillment. Vendor submissions reflect this,
with AI features described across order capture, validation, routing, store
brokering, exception management, and returns. Buyers should separate
production capability from road map, ask for reference evidence, and weigh the
operational and governance implications of agents that take action on live orders.
▪ Require composable architecture and configurable change. Every retailer is
different, and the market keeps moving, so out-of-the-box coverage is rarely
enough. Buyers should look for extensibility through no- and low-code
configuration that line-of-business teams can manage, and for microservices that
can be adopted modularly and added to existing order management rather than
requiring a full suite at once. Buyers should also ask how the platform supports
agility under sourcing and tariff volatility, and how quickly fulfillment rules can be
changed during peak periods.
VENDOR SUMMARY PROFILES
This section briefly explains IDC's key observations resulting in a vendor's position in the
IDC MarketScape. While every vendor is evaluated against the criteria outlined in the
Appendix, this description provides a summary of each vendor's strengths and
opportunities.
SAP
After a thorough evaluation of SAP's strategies and capabilities, IDC has positioned the
company in the Leaders category within this IDC MarketScape for worldwide AI-enabled
order orchestration and fulfillment applications for retail and B2C.
SAP is a global enterprise software provider based in Walldorf, Germany, delivering
order management capabilities through SAP Order Management Services, a suite
comprising SAP Order Management Foundation, SAP Order Management for Sourcing
and Availability, and SAP Omni-channel Sales Transfer and Audit. The suite is built on a
cloud-native, API-first, event-driven microservices architecture designed for composable,
modular integration across SAP and non-SAP technology ecosystems. SAP employs
approximately 109,000 people worldwide, delivers its OMS suite exclusively as a cloud
SaaS subscription, and offers modular per-component pricing enabling organizations to
adopt capabilities selectively.