There’s a famous quote in HBO’s The Wire: “you start to follow the money, and you don't know where it's gonna take you.”

While we operate in a very different world to (and swear a lot less than) the Baltimore Police Department, we decided to follow the money. Why? Because in our industry, following the money tells us how enterprise retailers are approaching the new financial year. 

In Shippit’s State of Shipping Report 2026, we asked decision makers at over 100 leading retailers to list their main investment focuses. AI and automation was a top priority for 35% of retailers, followed by promotions (34%), click and collect (33%), and supply chain optimisation (32%).

To make sense of what those investments tell us, where the gaps are, and how the results compare to real, on-the-ground conversations with enterprise retailers, we spoke to Clare Jolly, Senior Manager of Customer Success at Shippit.  

Working closely with 25 of Australia’s most recognisable brands - household names across apparel, homewares, pet, and electronics - Clare has a unique vantage point on where top-tier ANZ retail is actually placing its bets.

So we asked her what the money is actually telling us.

TL;DR

• Cost management is a top priority for enterprise retailers, and discounting is the most common reflex it triggers. But, Clare argues, discounting is “a symptom, not a strategy”.
• Many retailers are replatforming to improve their cart experience, with conversion the new “battleground”.
• Bringing together all deliveries and all freight in one “single source of truth” is set to be a major FY27 trend, but doing so successfully hinges on the right data and platform.

Is AI as common as the data suggests?

While AI and automation is the leading investment, according to the data, it isn’t as clear cut from Clare’s vantage point.

“The AI and automation figure is interesting to me,” she says. “A lot of what's being called AI investment at the enterprise level is workflow automation or reporting tooling that's been rebadged.

“The retailers genuinely investing in predictive routing or AI-driven estimated delivery dates are a small but growing cohort that we are actively working with.”

Instead, a different priority comes up in Clare’s conversations.

Why is cost management the priority, and discounting the trap?

“Cost management is their number one priority," she says. “They want to maintain service levels, but also maintain that cost control. It's been volatile for them, so that's been a big discussion we're having with retailers."

Some of that volatility is the Amazon effect making itself felt on price, speed, and reliability all at once. 

“Consumers sit at home at 10 o'clock at night and think, ‘I need a dress for Wednesday’. They’re straight on Amazon, and they've got it in their hands within a day or two. It's real, and it's having an impact." 

Competing with that while holding margin is the squeeze every enterprise retailer is in.

The reflex it triggers is discounting (remember, the second biggest investment focus). 

Continuing a pattern that has played out during peak, EOFY sales started in early June - weeks before their former rush. They’re entirely re-shaping the promotional calendar, but for Clare, timing a discount differently doesn’t make it a strategy.

“Discounting is a symptom, not a strategy,” she says. “When I see heavy promotion investment I want to understand whether it's acquiring genuinely new customers or just pulling forward purchases from existing ones at a lower margin." 

Discounting trains customers to wait for the next ‘30% off’ website pop up and window decals. A better delivery experience earns the kind of loyalty that transcends sales periods. Shippit data shows that retailers who offered same- and next-day delivery outgrew those that didn’t by 4% during BFCM.

“We have a mid-market retailer, operating across multiple product categories, who’d built their entire fulfilment model around one carrier. They had no visibility into whether they were on the right rate card, and were exposed to mounting fuel surcharges as volumes scaled. 

“We ran a full freight analysis across their order mix (size, weight, destination) and modelled a multi-carrier split. We introduced two new carriers alongside their existing provider. The outcome was a meaningful reduction in cost per shipment. The modelled savings at peak were in the tens of thousands per month.

“I've seen retailers recover significant per-order margin just by introducing a second carrier and letting smart routing allocate volume. That's not a future-state investment. You can do it now.”

How are enterprise retailers approaching cart conversions?

One of the most active investments Clare is observing today is “replatforming”.

“Multiple accounts are mid-migration to new commerce platforms, specifically to enable a better delivery experience at the cart,” she says.

It’s here where the winners and losers will be determined. 

For years, the only numbers that mattered at checkout were product price and delivery cost. Today, certainty has a disproportionate impact on conversion. Shippit research shows that 52% of shoppers would prefer a reliable delivery over a fast one, and 38% would be more likely to buy if there was an accurate delivery estimate.

Currently, retailers advertise 5.2 days for delivery at checkout. Yet average delivery times are 2.2 days. That delivery promise gap is a conversion killer. The brands who close it fastest, will turn browsers into buyers.

Is a single source of truth the real FY27 prize?

Part of what's driving these bigger-picture investments is that retailers are watching each other more closely than ever.

“They're asking specifically, in their category, what are other people doing," Clare says. “Particularly around delivery speed promises and carrier mix.”

One trend that customers have already begun exploring is a central single source of truth. It’s one Clare is watching closely. 

“A large-format national retailer had a genuine ambition to build a single unified view of all their shipments. On-platform and off-platform, BYO carriers, B2B freight, owned fleets; everything in one dashboard,” she explains. “The use case is obvious. Better customer comms, internal ops visibility, a single version of the truth.”

Clare believes it's a sign of things to come, with more retailers set to realise the benefit of consolidating every carrier, fleet, fulfilment location, and freight type into one platform.

“What this tells me is that a single source of logistics truth is genuinely appealing to enterprises,” she continues.

“But it consistently hits the same wall: the B2C and B2B data required is usually not owned by the same team and own fleets are managed by a different stakeholder. The retailers who've made progress here all solved the internal data ownership problem first."

Questions to ask to make your investments work harder for you

While retailers are approaching the new financial year with different focuses, there’s a groundswell of optimism according to the data. Four in five (83%) of retailers are forecasting growth, with one in three predicting growth in excess of 10%.

“That finding doesn't surprise me. I am having conversations with customers, and they're projecting growth.

“I think the businesses that need to stabilise have got points of failure that we are talking to them about longer-term: a multi-carrier strategy, accurate delivery estimates at checkout, and moving away from that sales and discounts dependency.”

Capitalising on that confidence requires the right investments. If your budget hasn’t been finalised, ask yourself a few candid questions:

• Does our budget allocation reflect whether we're stabilising or optimising? Or are we funding last year's habits?
• Are we investing in things we know our customers want? Or based on a hunch?
• Do our promotions actually win new customers? Or do they just discount the ones we already had?
• Do we have the data access (and the confidence in what we see) to provide more certainty at checkout?
• How many systems do we have to open to get one honest view of our delivery operation, how it’s performing and what it’s costing us?

So if you follow your money trail, does it lead you to a short-term sales spike or a long-term structural advantage?

⇒ Subscribe for new editions of Delivered

If this edition made you think about how you’re assigning budget, pursuing growth, and managing costs, subscribe and share it with a logistics or ecommerce decision maker in your network.