Research shows divide between connected supply chains and siloed organizations
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In today’s supply chain, a week is not merely a long time. It can be the difference between protecting margins and absorbing avoidable cost; maintaining availability and losing sales; or preserving customer trust and explaining why another commitment has been missed.
Geopolitical tensions, tariff changes, economic uncertainty and supplier instability are no longer occasional interruptions to an otherwise predictable operating environment.
They increasingly overlap, interact and move faster than traditional planning cycles.
Senior Industry Strategies Director – Retail & CPG at Blue Yonder.
The external risk picture supports that conclusion. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2026 identifies geoeconomic confrontation as the leading risk for both 2026 and the period to 2028. Half of the experts surveyed expect the global outlook over the next two years to be turbulent or stormy.
This is creating a decision-speed challenge at the heart of global commerce.
Research with supply chain leaders, found that only 20% can develop and deploy a response to a geopolitical disruption within 24 hours. A further 38% require more than a week.
During those seven days, transport costs can change, capacity can disappear, inventory can become stranded and competitors can secure alternative sources of supply. By the time a response has passed through every functional review and approval, the original assumptions may already be obsolete.
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The critical question is not whether an organization can see disruption. It is whether it can convert that signal into an executable enterprise decision while there is still time to influence the outcome.
For many years, supply chain transformation focused on improving forecasts, optimizing individual functions and reducing cost. Those disciplines remain important, but many of the operating models surrounding them were designed for a more predictable world.
Today’s disruptions cut across procurement, manufacturing, logistics, inventory, commercial planning and finance simultaneously. Yet many organizations still manage them through separate systems, functional metrics and sequential decisions.
Consider a tariff change. It may require the business to reassess sourcing, production, inventory deployment, pricing, customer allocation and margin exposure. If each function develops its own answer before the enterprise reconciles the trade-offs, valuable time is lost.