Supply chain leaders know the investment case for resilience and capability. The harder question is why it keeps failing — and what practitioners are doing differently to get it through. Drawing on a BPC online roundtable hosted by James Moffatt of Baringa.

Most supply chain AI initiatives are launched under pressure to act rather than in response to a clearly identified problem. A BPC discussion hosted by Infor's Andrew Dalziel surfaces the disconnect — and what separates organisations seeing returns from those stuck in pilot purgatory.

A practitioner discussion on cost-to-serve trade-offs across service, working capital and margin. What leaders are actually experiencing, where simulation helps, and why the finance relationship is often the hardest constraint to shift.

Supply chain leaders broadly agree that resilience matters, yet resilience investment keeps losing out to projects with calculable short-term returns. Drawing on a conversation with Simon Geale of Proxima, this article examines why that gap persists, how the framing shift from cost to strategic investment changes the internal conversation, what Proxima's Global Sourcing Risk Index reveals about mispriced near-shoring risk, and where to start when the full solution is out of reach.

Planning transformation projects frequently involve external consultants, yet many supply chain leaders approach these relationships with a degree of scepticism. Drawing on a conversation with former practitioner turned consultant Dale Edwards, this article explores why that scepticism exists and how it reflects the practical realities of planning transformation. It examines the gap between planning theory and operational behaviour, the risks of beginning transformation programmes with technology rather than clearly defined operational problems, and practical ways organisations can evaluate improvements before committing to major change. Rather than criticising consultants, the article argues that a constructive level of scepticism can improve decision-making and lead to more effective collaboration between organisations and external advisors.

Why expediting becomes the default response in volatile supply chains. A discussion with practitioners reveals how unresolved structural trade-offs around service, inventory, cost and capacity push organisations into reactive firefighting rather than deliberate resilience.

Why resilience is no longer about restoring stability, but about redesigning decisions, aligning capital allocation with risk tolerance, and investing deliberately in predictability in a structurally volatile world.

Chris Bassano’s experience across industrial and building products supply chains highlights how resilience is built through operating model design rather than technology alone. Drawing on large-scale transformations, the article explores synchronisation between demand and supply, network redesign, the role of S&OP and IBP in orchestrating the organisation, and how inventory discipline translates into working capital and free cash flow. It emphasises the importance of framing supply chain decisions in financial terms and building strong alignment with the CFO to secure investment and sustain resilience.

Insights from a discussion hosted by Andy Devlin on how to test assumptions about data readiness in supply chain AI initiatives, focusing on use-case sufficiency and sequencing.

Insights from a practitioner discussion hosted by Andy Devlin on how supply chain leaders can align digital accountability with dispersed data ownership when shaping AI and automation initiatives.

When resilience ambitions become real, working capital becomes the point of decision. This article explores how resilience translates into cash exposure, why short-term responses harden into long-term cost, and how planning disciplines determine whether working capital becomes a constraint or a strategic lever.

Resilience is widely agreed as a priority — but rarely defined in operational terms. This article explores what resilience actually means in practice, why many responses default to inventory and buffers, and how cost, time, and sustainability determine whether resilience strengthens the business or quietly undermines it.

The same planning leader, two very different strategies. This Perspective explores how ownership model, maturity, and constraints reshape what “good” planning looks like — and why copying peers is often a costly mistake.

Most large planning transformations fail long before technology is implemented. Drawing on practitioner experience, this Perspective explores why problem definition, operating model design, and ROI discipline determine success before vendor selection begins.

You may feel ready to invest in new supply chain technology, but progress often stalls much earlier — when data foundations are not aligned to real decision needs. Drawing on large-scale operational experience, Andy Devlin explains why decision-led data foundations matter, how to avoid “boiling the ocean,” and where to focus first to enable scalable change.

The trade-off between service, cost and cash is widely accepted in supply chains. This article challenges whether it is truly unavoidable, or a consequence of how planning decisions are framed.

Many supply chains appear stable but rely on planning assumptions that no longer hold. This article explains why average-based planning struggles in volatile environments and why failure often goes unnoticed.

Even when priorities are clear, organisations often stall because they don’t know what ‘ready’ looks like. This article sets out calm, practical signals of decision readiness: ownership, evidence thresholds, alignment on risk, and the ability to adapt when assumptions change. It also explains why post-event momentum often fades, and how to structure follow-up so it supports decisions without pushing premature sales conversations.

A decision-led perspective on where to start in food and beverage supply chains once data improves, focusing on prioritisation, trade-offs, and decision leverage.

Industrial manufacturing supply chains face long horizons, capital-intensive assets, and decisions that are hard to reverse. This article explores how leaders should prioritise once data reliability improves—focusing on commitment points, optionality, and scenarios that change capacity, sourcing, and customer promises. It’s for manufacturing leaders moving from analysis to sequencing: choosing the first moves that reduce regret and build resilience.

Once you accept that transformation is a decision problem, the next step is testing what must be true for value to appear. This article sets out practical enabling conditions that turn better data and systems into better decisions—process clarity, actionable agility, trusted data, and customer-facing productivity. It’s aimed at leaders who are pressure-testing readiness and assumptions before prioritising initiatives or engaging vendors.

Many transformation programmes stall not because the technology is wrong, but because organisations never align on which decisions matter most and what must change to improve them. This perspective introduces the 'value void' and explains why common explanations (data, change management, readiness) miss the underlying constraint: shared decision clarity. It’s for supply chain and transformation leaders who are orienting around where to start before investing in tools or programmes.

Supply chains designed for cost and efficiency are now operating in a permanently unstable world. In this conversation, Tim Richardson, CEO of Iter Consulting, explains why volatility is no longer cyclical, why confidence among supply-chain leaders has eroded, and why resilience must be designed into networks rather than bolted on after disruption hits. He argues that adaptability depends less on chasing new technology and more on clear thinking, sound foundations, and leadership capable of making decisions before the next crisis arrives.

Trevor Jordaan is Senior Director at Blue Yonder, one of the few major supply chain vendors to explicitly frame its product strategy around composability. In this conversation with JP Doggett, he explains what composability means in practice rather than in marketing, why organisational readiness is the harder problem than technology, and what becoming AI fit requires from supply chain leaders, teams and governance structures.

Composable and agile supply chain innovation is often discussed in abstract terms. This article brings the conversation down to ground level, exploring what modular approaches actually look like in practice, where the best starting points are inside complex legacy environments, and how a crawl-walk-run model connects incremental capability-building to a longer-term operating model.

Nick Miles spent over seven years at Burberry, leading supply chain IT and later IT strategy. In this conversation with JP Doggett, he reflects on how Burberry moved from a monolithic transformation approach to composable, best-of-breed solutions, what governance of innovation investment actually requires, and how to engage vendors in a way that distinguishes credible capability from sales talk.

Graham Whittemore is founder of Peakview Labs and previously held senior supply chain roles at Amazon, Wayfair and CVS. In this conversation with JP Doggett, he argues that integration is the central nervous system of composable architecture, explains why ERP is no longer the centre of gravity in the supply chain tech ecosystem, and explores how low-code tools and AI are lowering the cost of experimentation for operators.

Supply chain operators and startups want to work together. Both sides report the same frustrations. This article, drawing on conversations with founders, investors and supply chain leaders, examines why the gap persists: career risk on the operator side, trust and integration barriers in procurement, the fragility of internal champions, and what a portfolio approach to innovation might look like if operators borrowed thinking from investors.

Ravi Wesley is a venture capital investor at Marula Square and formerly Industry Strategist at Blue Yonder. In this conversation with JP Doggett, he challenges how supply chain innovation is financially framed, explains why reactive innovation cycles produce poor outcomes, warns against vendors rebranding existing products as composable, and explores what agentic AI actually requires from an architectural standpoint.

Professor Glenn Parry of Surrey Business School has spent 25 years researching value in supply chains, servitisation and ecosystem orchestration. In this conversation with JP Doggett, he explains why ERP remains a one-size-fits-nobody solution, why value must be specified before transformation is attempted, how composability offers deeper resilience than visibility dashboards, and why trust is always the deciding factor in whether technology-led change actually holds.

Systems and methods matter but culture is often the deciding factor. Part 6 of this series explores why pilots rarely survive the transition to scale, how fragmentation between IT, supply chain and finance creates the conditions for innovation to stall, why shadow spreadsheets persist as a symptom of broken trust, and what research says about the cultural conditions that allow digital transformation to compound rather than stall.

Cybersecurity incidents at JLR, Marks & Spencer and Co-op cost hundreds of millions and disrupted physical operations. Part 5 of this series examines why supply chain leaders can no longer treat security as IT's problem, how fragmented governance creates accountability gaps, and what regulatory pressure from DORA and the classification of UK incidents as systemic events means for how innovation programmes are approved and scoped.

Zoe Webster has spent over 25 years in AI, from computer science research to shaping national strategy at Innovate UK, leading BT's AI enablement centre and working as an independent adviser. In this conversation with JP Doggett, she explains why scepticism about AI is legitimate, why framing the problem before selecting the technology is the critical step most organisations skip, and how to avoid the Betamax trap of committing to a technology whose standards shift.

Building the business case for supply chain innovation is a tightrope. Part 4 of this series examines why SaaS costs are frequently misunderstood, how technical debt inflates the real cost of every new investment, why only 12% of large digital programmes deliver sustainable returns, and how mismatched payback horizons between boards and supply chain programmes undermine investment confidence.

John McFall and Martin McKie are co-founders of Supply Chain Wise and former AWS leaders. In this conversation with JP Doggett, they explain why burning-platform innovation cycles produce inflated business cases and eroded trust, why Excel persists as the shadow control tower in most large supply chains, and how governance and procurement strategy can create the optionality that breaks the current cycle.

The gap between AI ambition and AI readiness in supply chains is large and growing. Part 3 of this series explores why skills shortages, fragmented data and governance gaps consistently prevent digital programmes from scaling, why the 1% of organisations that have fully automated processes with AI is not a surprise to practitioners, and what becoming AI fit actually requires.

Lidl spent an estimated €500 million over seven years on an SAP implementation before reverting to its legacy system. This article examines what went wrong, why the project became a reference point in supply chain conversations about large-scale transformation, and what Lidl's subsequent approach to targeted, modular investment suggests about how the failure may have shaped its innovation strategy.

Waterfall change management was designed for a stable world. Part 2 of this series examines why linear, multi-year transformation programmes routinely fail to keep pace with operational reality, why agile approaches are often adopted in name only, and what the companies that adapted fastest during Covid had in common that others lacked.

ERP systems were built for stability, not volatility. Part 1 of this series examines why legacy architecture has become a bottleneck rather than an enabler, drawing on practitioner conversations and research to explore technical debt, the high failure rate of large transformation programmes, and why the sequence of change — operating model before systems — is so consistently misunderstood.

James Moffatt of Baringa explains why supply chain transformation so often stalls before technology becomes the constraint. From fragile data foundations and misaligned outsourcing economics to short-term leadership incentives, he outlines the structural barriers that slow progress—and why the only viable route to automation, resilience and decarbonisation is a deliberate, step-by-step maturity journey rather than a single leap to an ideal future state.

The supply chain and logistics technology sector is consolidating fast. This article explores the market trends driving M&A activity — AI and automation adoption, cloud-based SCM, sustainability compliance, TMS and WMS growth — and the investment logic behind private equity and strategic acquirer behaviour, with data on deal volumes, growth projections and the areas attracting the most attention.

An overview of where value creation opportunities are concentrating in UK and European supply chain and logistics in 2025, covering digital transformation priorities, unified data systems, advanced forecasting, infrastructure investment, sustainability reporting reform and emerging competitive dynamics including InPost's disruption of the parcel delivery market.

Alignment between business strategy and supply chain strategy is usually assumed rather than built. This article, drawing on research with around 20 supply chain leaders, examines why the gap opens at the point of strategy formation, widens through the year as conditions shift, and what the structural causes are — including metric misalignment, planning cycle design and the absence of supply chain input at the point where targets are set.

Supply chain and logistics have shifted from operational overhead to strategic priority. This article examines what is driving investor interest: market growth, M&A momentum, digital transformation, private equity activity, sustainability demands and infrastructure investment, and what the gap between venture funding in Europe and the US signals about where opportunity may be concentrated.

The post argues that supply chain forecasting often fails because companies focus on tools rather than decisions. Drawing on multinational IBP and S&OP experience, it highlights how over-complex AI-driven systems are frequently adopted before organisations are clear on what they actually need to decide, over what time horizons, and at what level of detail. Clean, reliable data must come before technology, and simpler, iterative forecasting approaches—often piloted or custom-built—can deliver faster, cheaper value than defaulting to large, “safe” vendors. The real objective is not perfect forecast accuracy, but greater execution agility in an increasingly volatile environment.