A bibliometric review of supply chain finance and digitalisation: mapping, current streams, and future research agenda

The digitalisation of supply chain finance (SCF) is a relatively new and fast-growing discipline in business and management. It helps reduce financial risk in supply chains and integrates the cash-to-cash cycle and working capital. Given the importance of supply chain digitalisation in this digital era, this study provides an analysis of the extant literature on digitalisation and SCF published in the last 82 (1941-2023) using scientometrics and bibliometric analyses. In total, 4027 scientific documents were retrieved from the Scopus database. The Visualisation of Similarities (VOSviewer) software was employed to perform a co-occurrence analysis of all publication trends, leading authors, and keywords. A bibliometric analysis was conducted on the top documents, authors, sources, and affiliations; cluster and content analyses of the most influential papers published in Scopus to discover the main streams and themes in SCF. The results of the analysis show that SCF is an interdisciplinary research area that intersects sustainability, management, mathematical models, economics, etc. The findings also emphasise that digitalisation should be integrated into supply chain logistics which has implications for the entire supply chain industry, including digital procurement, inventory management and control, receivables management, payables management, delivery and logistics, sources and raw material management, and manufacturing efficiency. The findings are significant as they can help managers focus on technological advancements, supply chain flexibility tactics, and the aptitude of organisations for continued success and alignment with Industry 4.0.