By Alexis Wierenga | May 8, 2024
Executive Insights from Gartner Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo
Amidst the turmoil of recent years, outside forces have dictated where supply chain leaders must focus to provide value. Now, as things settle down, it’s time to proactively take control, rather than waiting for the next external source of friction. Gartner VP Analyst Tom Enright shared how to do it.
To drive high supply chain value, focus on these areas of high reward:
Redefine “value.” It is about more than cost reduction. It also includes growth, commercial innovation and sustainability.
Create opportunity from uncertainty. Ensure your organization is antifragile by shifting production and operations within both the physical network and assets sites, diversifying capabilities and collaborating to manage risk.
Reduce complexity through designed simplicity. This user experience-based approach to business transformation seeks to deliberately design transformation to be easy to understand and execute.
Learn More: Attend a Gartner Supply Chain Conference
“We tend to overestimate the effect of technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”
Tom Enright, VP Analyst at Gartner
Nine out of 10 organizations say the importance of improving supplier relationships to become a customer of choice has increased in the past two years. To consistently earn competitive preference for scarce resources across a critical mass of suppliers, companies must focus on becoming more attractive customers and enabling supplier collaboration, said Gartner Senior Director Analyst Miguel Cossio.
“Only 24% of supply chain leaders have in place a formal strategy to become a customer of choice.”
Miguel Cossio, Sr Director Analyst at Gartner
To make your company a customer of choice to suppliers:
Set a clear strategy. Define the outcome and how you will make it happen. Lean into not only the what and how, but also the why.
Revisit supplier segmentation. Focus on suppliers’ strategic importance to the business.
Make segmentation actionable. Define clear supplier engagement guidelines to optimize resource allocation.
A majority of CEOs, boards of directors and CSCOs report technology initiatives are a top priority in 2024 and plan to increase investment in digital capabilities. Gartner Senior Director Analyst Carly West highlighted how to prioritize this year’s top eight supply chain technology trends in a way that advances digital maturity and gives your organization a competitive edge.
"82% of CSCOs believe their organization will increase their investment in supply chain technology over the next two years."
Carly West, Sr Director Analyst at Gartner
The top supply chain technology trends trends for 2024 are:
Cyber Extortion
Supply Chain Data Governance
End-to-end Sustainable Supply Chains
AI-Enabled Vision Systems
Augmented Connected Workforce
Composite AI
Next-Generation Humanoid Working Robots
Machine Customers
Ninety-five percent of supply chains organizations feel pressure to react to disruptions in real time. While this can be a competitive advantage, the vast majority of organizations are ill-equipped to weigh when to act and how to mitigate overreaction and biases in execution. Ankur Mehta, Gartner Director, Advisory, outlined clear steps to successfully enable real-time decision execution in your supply chain — a capability that only 7% of supply chain leaders report.
“10% of supply chain organizations have clear and aligned business rules that allow the automation of decisions.”
Ankur Mehta, Director, Advisory at Gartner
To set the groundwork for real-time decision execution:
Get clear on what you’re dealing with. Define what “real time” means to your organization, and prioritize cases with demonstrated value.
Avoid overwhelming decision makers. Focus on existing decision rules and address gaps in cultural readiness for a partnership more reliant on machine intelligence.
CEOs are feeling the tension of driving growth while responding to evolving markets. Gartner VP Analyst Ken Chadwick reviewed exclusive insight on their challenges and priorities with an eye on how supply chain leaders can increase efficiency and productivity to support the needs of the business.
“54% of CEOs think supply chain challenges are persistent and will remain a long-term business problem.”
Ken Chadwick, VP Analyst at Gartner
To energize productivity to meet CEO growth demands:
Tune your supply chain to your adoption profile. Invest at the same rate at which your organization adopts new technology to ensure there is no value gap.
Continue to play the long game on sustainability investments. Climate change is an operational threat, and this shows no signs of changing.
Be cautiously optimistic with AI. Watch, experiment and prepare to shape governance around investment and application.
While focus on supply chain value has increased in recent years, productivity growth has been stagnant since 2015. Gartner Director Analyst Lindsay Azim outlined how high-performing supply chains plan to evolve over the next three to five years to build their credibility and support sustainable business growth.
“45% of supply chain leaders anticipate that objectives, goals and incentives that conflict with other parts of the business will be the biggest challenge in the next one to three years.”
Lindsay Azim, Director Analyst at Gartner
To enable the sustainable growth of your enterprise and the ecosystems around it, focus on:
Evolving human economic value. Energize people and networks to sense, connect, innovate and respond to the shifting environment.
Rethinking digital economic value. Use technology to amplify productivity, partnership and the orchestration of decision making around your assets.
Creating resource economic value. Mobilize the capital, material and other inputs of the supply chain.
Gartner Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo helps CSCOs and supply chain leaders solve present-day issues surrounding heightened expectations, geopolitical uncertainty, economic volatility and talent burnout while positioning themselves for long-term success.
Learn more about Gartner supply chain conferences taking place in Orlando, Denver, London and Barcelona in 2024.
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Tom Enright is a Research Vice President in the Consumer Retail team. Tom specializes in supply chain strategies and operations across all retail product sectors. His focus areas include last mile strategies, order fulfilment strategies, returns management, re-commerce and marketplace trading strategies.
Lindsay Azim is a Senior Director, Analyst in Gartner's Supply Chain and Procurement Management practice. Her research focuses on how to design and implement end-to-end supply chain risk management strategies. Lindsay has authored and contributed to research on CSCO strategic priorities, sustainability strategy development, greenhouse gas emissions reduction, executive influence and storytelling, and procurement functional management. She is a co-host of The Gartner Supply Chain podcast and a Gartner keynote speaker. Lindsay presented the keynote most recently in Denver, Colorado at Gartner's 2024 Supply Chain Planning Summit and in Barcelona, Spain at Gartner's 2025 Supply Chain Symposium.
Ken Chadwick is a VP, Distinguished Advisor covering supply chain strategy, operations, and leadership. Using in-depth cross-industry research, he provides insight to Chief Supply Chain Officers on the trends, strategies, and best practices necessary to confront the complexity of 21st century supply chains. In his 12 years as an analyst and keynote speaker at Gartner, he led impactful research on organization design, change and transition management, leading social organizations, and next generation productivity for supply chain. He currently advises Chief Supply Chain Officers on topics including: - Supply chain trends, current and future - End to end supply chain leadership - Supply chain strategy and governance - Organization design and organization behavior - Leadership transitions for new to role CSCOs - Supply chain transformation and technology transition
Ankur Mehta is a Director in Gartner's Supply Chain research organization, specializing in end-to-end supply chain performance management and the effective use of metrics across industries. He provides actionable insights and best practices to supply chain leaders, helping them utilize metrics and benchmark data to drive performance, shape outcomes, and make informed trade-off decisions. Ankur collaborates with executives to evaluate alternative approaches and implement best practices within their organizations. Additionally, he assists CSCOs and supply chain leaders in assessing their current maturity levels and prioritizing next steps using the Score framework to advance their maturity.
Carly West is a VP, TM for Quality, Risk, Network Design | CSCO Enablers and Industries | Supply Chain R&A
Miguel Cossio is a Research Sr Director in the Supply Chain Operations team. Miguel focuses on helping procurement leaders deliver greater value by adopting the latest trends in supplier collaboration and innovation, performance management and sustainable procurement.
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