Supply chains didn’t become “strategic” because leaders suddenly changed their minds. They became strategic because the last five to six years produced enough disruption data to expose how fragile efficiency-optimized networks can be when conditions stay unstable.
Research from McKinsey’s Global Institute has become one of the most-cited reference points because it quantifies the new baseline: disruptions lasting a month or longer now occur every 3.7 years, on average. Those events are not just operational headaches—they compound into financial drag. McKinsey’s research also estimates disruptions can cost the average organization 45% of one year’s profits over a decade.
That data matters because it reframes disruption as recurring, not rare.
Over the last several years, companies responded with supplier diversification, buffer inventory, and changes to sourcing footprints—but visibility has lagged. A recurring problem is that organizations often have strong insight into direct suppliers and far less downstream.
Research from EcoVadis noted that only 30% of firms have insight beyond direct suppliers and included a blunt assessment from a supply chain research consultant: There are no large corporations anywhere on the planet that have total supply chain visibility.In procurement terms, this is the structural issue: risk grows quietly where data stops.
Gartner’s procurement surveys reinforce that leaders are treating disruption as a defining factor, not a background variable. In October 2024, Gartner reported that supply disruption is the top threat to procurement’s future success, and that 42% of procurement leaders cited supply disruptions as the top risk.
As resilience became the organizing principle, the next question became financial: how much redundancy is sustainable?
BCG’s work on the “cost of resilience” frames the emerging operating model as balancing cost competitiveness and agility without sacrificing margin. As BCG puts it, the goal is striking the right balance between cost competitiveness and agility.
The forward outlook is increasingly shaped by two forces: the data intensity of operations and the energy required to power it.
The IEA’s analysis of energy and AI puts real numbers behind what many executives are hearing anecdotally. In the IEA’s Base Case, electricity generation to supply data centers is projected to rise from 460 TWh in 2024 to over 1,000 TWh in 2030 and 1,300 TWh in 2035. The IEA also highlights uncertainty bands, noting that by 2035, the range across cases spans from 700 to 1,700 TWh of data centre electricity demand.
For supply chain leaders, the implication is direct: digital operations and supply chain optimization are becoming more power-dependent at the same time grid buildout remains slow and contested.
That’s where the next decade of risk forms—not only in suppliers and lanes, but in the infrastructure that enables visibility, automation, compliance reporting, and real-time execution.
The last five to six years established a new baseline: disruption is frequent enough to be modeled, visibility gaps are persistent enough to be strategic, and resilience carries real cost tradeoffs.
The next five to ten years will likely intensify those dynamics. Analysts increasingly expect supply chain performance to depend as much on data quality and energy availability as on traditional procurement levers.
The next phase of supply chain strategy will be defined by how well organizations govern the information and power systems that supply chains now require.
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