Gartner Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo Orlando: Day 2 Highlights

We are bringing you news and highlights from the Gartner Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo, taking place in Orlando this week. Below is a collection of the key announcements and insights coming out of the conference.

On Day 2 from the conference, we are highlighting sessions on building a culture of quality, balancing risk management with cost concerns, and AI strategies for logistics. Be sure to check this page throughout the week for updates. 

• Gartner Says Chief Supply Chain Officers Must Deliver Multiple Sources of Value to Retain Enterprise Influence
• Four Human Economic Drivers to Reignite Supply Chain Productivity
• Gartner Predicts Half of Procurement Contract Management Will Be AI-Enabled by 2027

Presented by Lusi Zheng, Senior Director Advisor, Gartner

Supply chain leaders are challenged by the fundamental roots of the culture of quality, and how they should be adapted and reinforced to meet today’s demands. In this session, Lusi Zheng, Senior Director Advisor at Gartner, shared key findings from a decade of Gartner research on a culture of quality.

• “The drivers of a culture of quality are: employee ownership, peer involvement, message credibility and leadership emphasis.” 

• “New realities are challenging a culture of quality: change resistance, shrinking peer networks, information overload, low trust in leadership. New actions are required to meet these challenges.” 

• “Embed quality into the job itself and reduce the perception of employees needing to complete separate quality processes and activities.” 

• “Leverage peer influencers (quality ambassadors) to show employees that they’re involved with quality without needing to prescribe any actions.” 

• “Help employees understand how quality fits into other messages by aligning with and acknowledging tensions that exist with other functions on cultural promotions and priorities.” 

• “Help leaders emphasize quality credibly by investing in activities that change employee perceptions of leadership emphasis, not in activities that try to change leadership behavior.”

Presented by Heather Wheatley, VP Analyst, Gartner  

According to a recent Gartner survey, 82% of supply chain leaders agree that proactive mitigation was spent on the wrong risks. In this session, Heather Wheatley, VP Analyst at Gartner, highlighted three key elements of an effective supply chain risk management playbook that allows organizations to balance risk with cost to achieve organizational objectives.. 

• “An end-to-end risk management strategy has three key elements: build the strategy, manage prioritized risk and respond well to disruption.” 

• “Start by agreeing with wider business stakeholders what is important and then design a repeatable risk process that considers assessment, appetite and cost of mitigations.”

• “Current trends on spending show that 77% of supply chain leaders would have distributed their budget to cover different risks over the past 12 months.” 

• “Manage prioritized risk with two main strategies. First, reduce the likelihood of risk by reducing the surface area. Then, leverage resilience, agility and visibility to reduce the impact of risk.”

• “Gartner data shows that 71% of disruption plans required meaningful revisions after a disruption; ensure your business continuity plan addresses four key stages: risk assessment, business impact analysis, recovery strategies/plans and confirmation of plan effectiveness.”

Presented by Jose Reyes, Senior Director Analyst, Gartner  

Logistics leaders may be excited to deploy more AI capabilities but should also be mindful of the risks of premature adoption. In this session, Jose Reyes, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, offered a path for logistics leaders to align their AI strategies along key success criteria that will set their organizations up better for long-term success. 

• “Select projects that address a specific operational issue and define specific KPIs to measure success.” 
  

• “Just 3% of organizations feel that their data is completely ready for AI initiatives.” 

• “Organizations that have their data in a more ready state reap significantly better business outcomes in cost optimization, customer experience and end-to-end productivity.”

• “Build a data-literate and data-driven culture by focusing on process, data and training.”

• “Define a technology strategy that supports your AI vision; define when it’s best to build, buy or outsource the AI applications for specific use cases, talent, data readiness and flexibility.”