2026 Research Report finds SMBs accelerating AI integration while balancing supplier volatility, shifting demand, and rising inventory complexity.
BOSTON – September 23, 2026 – Netstock, the leading supply chain planning software provider for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), today released its 2026 Benchmark Report: The State of Supply Chain Planning, revealing that supply chain planning has entered a new phase. Rather than responding to one dominant disruption, SMBs are now balancing multiple planning pressures at once, including supplier volatility, changing demand, freight costs, raw material prices, and inventory performance.
Drawing on anonymized platform data from more than 2,500 customers worldwide, the report explores how businesses are adapting their planning strategies as supply chain complexity continues to evolve. While inventory performance continues to improve across several key measures, the research also shows that success now depends less on optimizing a single metric and more on making the right decisions as conditions change.
“Supply chain planning has become significantly more dynamic over the past year,” said Ara Ohanian, CEO of Netstock. “Businesses are no longer preparing for a single disruption. They’re balancing several challenges at once, each with the potential to affect inventory, suppliers and customer demand. The businesses performing best today are the ones with the visibility to understand what’s changing and the confidence to make informed decisions as conditions evolve.”
Among the report’s top findings:
- No single disruption dominates inventory planning. Supplier lead-time swings (29%), raw material costs (23%), freight and shipping costs (22%), and demand shifts (21%) emerged as nearly equal planning challenges, reflecting a more complex operating environment.
- Inventory performance is improving, even as new risks emerge. Typical businesses are turning inventory four times per year, the highest level in three years, while top performers now average nearly eight turns annually. At the same time, the share of SMBs reporting more than 10% of inventory as dead stock has doubled since 2024, highlighting the growing challenge of managing inventory mix rather than inventory volume.
- Supplier reliability is becoming just as important as supplier cost. Nearly three-quarters of SMBs cite lead time variability as a planning challenge, while 63% point to long lead times and 60% identify minimum order quantities as ongoing obstacles, highlighting a growing focus on supplier predictability alongside cost.
- AI has transitioned from experimentation to operational integration. The share of SMBs that don’t use AI or don’t know how it works has roughly halved since 2024, while data integrity and security have emerged as the top AI challenge for three consecutive years, rising from 23% of respondents in 2024 to 39% in 2026. The shift suggests businesses are moving beyond questions of access and increasingly confronting the practical realities of using AI.
- Businesses continue investing in growth despite ongoing uncertainty. Nearly every SMB surveyed launched new products, expanded existing product lines, or both over the past year, demonstrating that companies continue to invest while adapting to a more complex planning environment.
“What stands out this year isn’t a single trend. It’s how businesses are responding to an environment where multiple variables are changing at the same time,” said Jefferson Barr, Chief Marketing Officer at Netstock. “The strongest organizations aren’t chasing perfect inventory metrics. They’re improving supply chain visibility, allowing them to make faster planning decisions and quickly adapt as new challenges emerge. That’s the core shift that this year’s research captures.”
As SMBs prepare for peak planning season and look ahead to 2027, the report shows that agility, visibility, and better planning intelligence have become essential to navigating an increasingly complex supply chain landscape. From supplier performance and inventory optimization to AI adoption and sourcing strategies, the findings offer a data-driven view into how SMBs are redefining inventory planning in today’s operating environment.
