Beware the supply chain trust gap

Senior executives are significantly more likely to believe customers trust their organisations’ supply chains than the customers themselves actually do. 

That’s according to a new Deloitte Insights survey report titled Is your supply chain trustworthy?* This found that:

• 89% of executives who self-identified as leading suppliers said customers trust their supply chain operations;
• just 68% of 500 customers in a separate survey said the same.

Why it matters

The extent of the supply chain trust gap suggests there are blind spots in key areas that customers care about. Addressing these could become a competitive differentiator. 

“From the customer perspective, many Covid-19 pandemic-era supply chain challenges remain unresolved, despite improvements executives have worked hard to achieve,” explains James Cascone, partner at Deloitte Risk & Financial Advisory. “Unfortunately, such wide gaps in trust indicators like reliability and transparency against pre-pandemic expectations stand to worsen as new supply chain risks emerge.”

Takeaways 

• The trust gap varies depending on which aspect of the supply chain is being considered. The biggest gaps are in reliability (25%) and humanity (24%); the smallest in transparency (22%) and capability (16%).
• Nearly half (44%) of all supply chain executives surveyed expect to experience a supply chain shock in the next 24 months as a result of various external challenges.
• Possible shocks include price volatility (46%), inflation (44%), resource shortages (41%), and geopolitical instability (32%). 

*More than 1,000 executives from large global organizations operating complex supply chains were surveyed in North America (44%), EMEA (31%) and APAC (25%).

Sourced from Deloitte