New Accenture Report Finds Only 4% of CSCOs are “Future-Ready”

The pandemic exposed just how much the supply chain can make or break a company’s success. Vulnerabilities, which were once hidden, put the supply chain function into the national spotlight as widespread disruption took hold of items integral to everyday life from meat processing to computer chips.

And in the process, chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) have been elevated to the forefront of change. Now, where are we and what comes next?

Accenture recently conducted cross-industry research with insights from 1,100 C-suite executives, including 254 supply chain leaders, to understand how the role of a supply chain leader is evolving with the triple mandate of relevancy, resiliency and responsibility across the supply chain function.

Manish Sharma, group CEO of Accenture Operations, who leads a team of over 145,000 professionals worldwide, notes that even before the pandemic, chief supply chain officers were faced with increasing expectations – from supporting new customer experiences to driving profitability.

“Faced with their greatest stress test yet, chief supply chain officers were challenged to meet the moment and build a relevant, resilient and responsible supply chain that delivers for all stakeholders,” he says. “Today’s supply chain leaders are depended on to create a digitally powered, data-driven operating model to achieve a future-ready supply chain and enable long-term growth.”

Here are the Key Findings:

• Chief supply chain officers (CSCO) seen as key enabler and driver of top-line growth post-pandemic
• Hidden vulnerabilities: 81% of supply chain leaders say the pandemic has been their organization’s greatest stress test.
• Digging deeper: Today, only 4% of supply chain leaders say they are “future-ready” (Accenture’s highest level of operational maturity) while 34% expect to be there by 2023. Accenture’s found future-ready organizations are twice as efficient and three times more profitable than peers.
• What’s standing in the way? Accenture’s report found progress is hampered by a lack of visibility across the value chain as well as significant resource, technology and funding limitations.

Here are the Top challenges:

Lack of cohesive strategy and technology are cited as key challenges, a perception that reflects the struggle of executing an integrated strategy across a notoriously siloed function.
Unprecedented technological change: While 81% of supply chain leaders agree they are facing technological change at unprecedented speed and scale, many are still constrained by aging legacy technology and working in a patchwork of digital and non-digital systems.

Manish’s guidance to Supply Chain Leaders:

Collaborate across business and technology: Innovative companies make it a priority to break down silos between these departments. In fact, 86% of all future-ready organizations expect business and technology to collaborate fully by 2023.

Scale automation to augment human talent: Supply chain leaders recognize the importance of automation and report wide or full-scale automation in their organization has increased more than 4x over the past three years. With 96% projecting this to be the case in 2023, they expect this momentum to continue at a rapid pace.

Commit to making insight-driven decisions—with better data and AI: 76% report widespread or full-scale data use today, up more than 2.5x from three years ago.
Scale cloud investments to support digital supply chains: 80% believe their organization have applied cloud at scale.

Build ecosystem relationships: More than a third (39%) say the pandemic pushed their organizations to focus more on partner relationships.

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