Supply chains require digital transformation 

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The pandemic fully exposed global supply chains’ vulnerabilities and inefficiencies. While most brands were agile enough to shift strategies to address the uncertainties of the time, many prioritized speed and cost to meet the pressures of the moment, at the expense of long-term adaptability, resilience, and flexibility post-pandemic.  

Today, new supply chain pressures like tariffs, trade wars, climate change, and geopolitical uncertainty serve as reminders that complexity and disruption—the two words used to describe supply chain management in 2025 per Thomson Reuters’ global trade report—have the potential to once again, impact business and life.  

As brands and retailers analyze current risks across global operations, they ask: “How did we get here again?”  

Create adaptive supply chains  

A mid-pandemic EY survey found that enterprises were making plans to transform supply chain strategies to become more resilient, sustainable, and collaborative, leveraging technologies like AI, analytics, and automation. But did they? 

The answer is both yes and no. Once the urgency of the pandemic disruptions cooled, consumer packaged goods and retail companies turned their attention back to revenue generation, workforce optimization, and production. There was certainly some investment in digital transformation. Still, Food Technology’s Technology Trends Survey completed in 2024 found that about half of the food, beverage, and ingredient manufacturers surveyed were still in the planning stages, hoping to invest in AI (50%) and/or supply chain tracking systems (48%) as part of their 2025 digital transformation strategies.  

The time to re-invest in digital transformation is now. Creating and maintaining a resilient operation that can weather costly disruptions and meet shifting consumer expectations requires an adaptive supply chain supported by modern technology. As proven during the pandemic, supply chain breakdowns can derail economies. Short-term changes can be a Band-Aid fix but do not support long-term resilience when the next crisis comes along. Conversely, collaborative supply chains with structural flexibility, end-to-end visibility, and advanced analytics can transform existential threats into manageable challenges and unlock fast, predictive decision-making capabilities, no matter the crisis. 

As business leaders look ahead, here are the areas that will help organizations meet today’s supply chain pressures, and better position companies for long-term adaptability and resilience.  

Strategic alignment: Supply chains should be viewed as strategic assets foundational to decision making and performance optimization and can provide companies with a competitive advantage, not just as a target for cost-saving initiatives. Importantly, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach; upfront strategic alignment is critical.  

For example, retail behemoths Amazon and Costco set the gold standard with their supply chain strategies but have distinctive approaches supporting their unique business goals. While Amazon optimizes for endless selection, convenience, and speed, Costco focuses on delivering value through scale, simplification, and operational efficiency—two different approaches that achieve the same end goal: strong growth and loyal, happy customers. It’s critical for businesses to first align on what they’re trying to accomplish and what their strategic differentiators are and then set a supply chain strategy.  

Data foundation: Given the complexity of our global marketplace, supply chain visibility and advanced analytics are foundational elements of effective supply chain management strategies. Though many companies currently collect extensive data, it’s not immediately actionable. A yogurt brand, for example, might manufacture its product in the U.S. but rely on ingredients imported from different countries. Especially with looming tariffs, brands need insight into their product’s “bill of materials” to determine where each ingredient is sourced and access to clean, real-time, granular data to help them quickly understand the potential impact of tariffs on their operations.  

A fresh fruit brand could be navigating a food safety incident and need to quickly locate the affected inventory to determine where impacted batches were distributed. Companies must gather, collate, and normalize data from various inputs across their supply chains to inform quick decision making when needed.  

Cross-functional collaboration: In resilient supply chains, partners at each stage share information to optimize the flow of goods. Starting with the planning stage, accurate demand and supply forecasts allow procurement to source the correct quantities of production inputs from suppliers. It also helps identify which suppliers meet the company’s quality standards and consistently deliver on time so that manufacturing can maintain efficient production schedules. Accurate information on warehouse capacity and logistics resources is needed to ensure on-time delivery. Adaptive supply chains require cross-functional collaboration and real-time data sharing between and throughout organizations so that companies can identify potential issues in advance, such as low inventory or production bottlenecks, and act quickly to avoid disruptions.  

Cultural commitment: McKinsey data found that only one-quarter of supply chain survey respondents observed regular reporting on supply chain risks at the board level. Resiliency is a muscle that requires regular exercise, not something companies should only pay attention to when crises emerge. Supply chain transformation must be an ongoing change management imperative across the organization and at the highest levels, with strategies and plans regularly revisited and updated. By identifying early warning signals sooner, companies can make decisions faster and revise strategy and plans to mitigate the impacts of future crises. 

Supply chain disruptions are rarely predictable. The best approach for companies to stay ahead of future disruptions is creating a foundation that allows for agility in daily operations and for significant events, such as tariffs, which require fast decision making. By creating systems and processes that facilitate end-to-end visibility and collaboration, business leaders can focus on supply chain agility now, so we are ready for the next crisis when it occurs. 

Are Traasdahl is founder and CEO of Crisp. 

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