Gartner Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo Barcelona: Day 2 Highlights

We are bringing you news and highlights from the Gartner Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo, taking place in Barcelona 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 CEO concerns and their implications for CSCOs, building AI-enabled autonomous supply chains, and a roadmap to supply-chain-driven growth. Be sure to check this page throughout the week for updates. 

• Opening Keynote Press Release: Gartner Says Supply Chain’s Value Must Surpass Cost Savings to Remain Strategic Beyond Times of Crisis
• Day 2 Press Release: Gartner Identifies Three Actions for Supply Chain Leaders to Mitigate Long-Term Resource Constraints
• Day 3 Press Release: Gartner Predicts Half of Companies With Warehouse Operations Will Leverage AI-Enabled Vision Systems by 2027

Presented by Ken Chadwick, Distinguished VP Analyst, Gartner 

CEOs must meet the dual challenges of growing the business while responding to challenges of the evolving market. In this session, Ken Chadwick, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, shared the most recent insights on the challenges and priorities of CEOs, and how supply chain leaders can respond to support the needs of the business.

• “While acknowledging significant challenges in the landscape, CEOs are prioritizing increased performance this year, with growth at the top of the agenda.” 

• “Supply chain has dropped off the top 10 priorities of CEOs, after featuring in the last two years.” 

• “CEOs’ investment expectations have increased: 53% will require higher rates of return by 2% or more, while 64% have the same or shorter time horizon for that return.” 

• “Supply chain leaders have an opportunity to reap more value from existing digital investments. 67% of CEOs indicated that between 25% and 100% of their digital investment was wasted.”

• “Supply chain is on the frontline of climate impacts and contributing to environmental sustainability is a major growth opportunity, with 69% of CEOs viewing sustainability as part of their growth strategies.” 

• CEOs are captivated by AI’s potential to manage costs; CSCOs should begin now to pinpoint AI productivity gains and plan for second-order effects.”

Presented by Pierfrancesco Manenti, VP Analyst, Gartner 

Organizations are prioritizing productivity growth to drive economic gains, and they see artificial intelligence (AI) as the vehicle to propel them towards “next-generation productivity.” In this session, Pierfrancesco Manenti, VP Analyst at Gartner, outlined the three phases for organizations to build an AI-enabled autonomous supply chain that will provide a new basis for productivity.

• “An autonomous business is partly governed, and majority operated, by self-learning software agents that provide smart products and services to machine customer prevalent markets.” 

• “Supply chain leaders should define a long-term strategic ambition to increase productivity by becoming autonomous; for most organizations this will take at least 10 years.” 

• “An autonomous supply chain must be able to make autonomous decisions, supply smart products and services, and respond to customer machine demand.” 

• “Supply chain leaders should plan the path to an autonomous supply chain along the 3 A’s: Automation (mainstream now), Augmentation (mainstream within 5-10 years) and Autonomy (mainstream in 10+ years).”

• “Create a next generation roadmap for the autonomous supply chain by focusing investments in machine learning and piloting GenAI.”

Presented by Suzie Petrusic, Senior Director Analyst, Gartner

Customer experience is driven in large part by the supply chain and delivering it effectively can also unlock new avenues of top line growth. In this session, Suzie Petrusic, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, shared three key steps that make up the roadmap to supply-chain-driven growth.

• “The three steps to supply chain driven growth include: 1) excel in customer satisfaction 2) embrace customer ease and 3) build and scale enablement and supply chain as a service (SCaaS).” 

• “Gartner data shows that customers are 30% to 40% more likely to repurchase when they feel satisfied from the supply chain experience.”  

• “Delivering a customer experience that is low-effort (easy) for the customer delivers multiple benefits, including a 94% higher likelihood of repurchases and 88% increase in spend/share of wallet.” 

• “Use customer personas to help map the diversity of potential customer journeys and better understand the likely touch points that customers have with your supply chain.”

• “Supply chains that enable their customers (rather than merely satisfy them) are 2x more likely to achieve loyalty, but only 23% of supply chain organizations currently prioritize customer enablement.”