Gartner Says Chief Supply Chain Officers Must Shift to an Autonomous Business Mindset

Chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) must prepare for a new era of business in which decision-making and execution increasingly shift from siloed automation to outcome-driven autonomy, according to Gartner, Inc., a business and technology insights company.

During the Opening Keynote at Gartner Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo in Barcelona, attendees learned how autonomous business capabilities are beginning to reshape supply chain strategy and execution, and the distinct implications for supply chains.

Autonomous business is defined by Gartner as a strategy that uses self-improving, adaptable technology to make decisions, take action and create new types of value by increasing both people autonomy and machine autonomy. In supply chains, this represents a significant change because digital intelligence must be coordinated with physical execution across complex networks of factories, warehouses and transportation assets.

“As autonomous business becomes the dominant model for how organizations run, CSCOs must rethink not just how work gets done, but who is making the decisions. They must decide if it’s people, machines or both,” said Alan O’Keeffe, VP Analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice. “This is a shift from optimizing tasks to orchestrating outcomes, with clear guardrails that balance machine autonomy with human leadership.”

A Gartner survey of 469 global CEOs and senior business leaders from March tp November 2025 found that 8 in 10 executives expect autonomous business to become the dominant form of business by 2030. For supply chain organizations, this shift is quickly moving from experimentation to competitive expectation, as customers increasingly evaluate partners based on their ability to build autonomous capabilities.

Autonomy in supply chain is fundamentally different from other business functions, due to the complexity of moving physical goods where constraints are real, execution is variable, and disruptions can ripple quickly across the system. This complexity is what makes the shift significant.

To prepare, Gartner emphasized three readiness priorities for CSCOs:

• Move operations from task automation focused on optimizing for speed to outcome-based decision flows.
• Strengthen intelligence with governance, guardrails and context that allow autonomy to scale safely.
• Evolve the workforce so teams can oversee, improve and collaborate with AI-enabled systems across the network.

“This is not a ‘set it and forget it’ technology story,” O’Keeffe said. “The winners will be the supply chains that design for autonomy in the real world, where physical operations, risk tolerance and accountability matter as much as algorithms.”

More information on building an autonomous supply chain can be found here: The AI-Native Supply Chain.