Written by Kelly Barner and Jeanette Jones, December 10, 2024
Supply Chain 2015 – 2025
A lot has changed since Jeanette and I published Supply Market Intelligence for Procurement Professionals: Research, Process, and Resources in 2015. That is why Jeanette faithfully publishes an annual update focused on sharing the latest information sources and supply intelligence trends.
With this being the 10-year anniversary of our book’s release, it is a good opportunity to look at what else has changed in supply chain. What were we focused on in 2015 and how different is it from what we prioritize today?
After a review of top news stories and end-of-year topic round ups, I’ve identified four areas where we can point to both progress and the need for continued attention within the supply chain. They are technology, port strikes, regulations, and sustainability.
Hype Tech: IoT v. AI
Digital transformation was as central a topic a decade ago as it is today, but the focus was different. Back then, the hope was that machine-to-machine connectivity would allow manufacturers to make smarter decisions about production and shipping while controlling costs. Known as the Internet of Things (or IoT), a network of ‘smart’ objects and devices would use sensors and software to report information and adjust settings. This activity would naturally lead to the creation of Big Data – an expansive resource ripe for mining and analysis.
Now our expectations go beyond automated communication to artificial intelligence. Devices and machines aren’t just transmitting information, they are powered by software that allows them to act on their own and even learn to anticipate future needs. Perhaps because of this increasingly sophisticated autonomy, we no longer need a designation to tell us whether data is ‘Big’ or not. While data quality problems persist at scale, the collective imagination of the supply chain is being challenged to leverage this new capability.
Port Strikes: East v. West
Then as now, even the largest U.S. ports are highly dependent on a unionized workforce, unlike their counterparts in Europe and Asia. This makes port operations susceptible to strikes that lead to congestion and the loss or spoilage of perishable goods, not to mention time and opportunity.
A West Coast port strike that started the previous fall stretched into the spring of 2015. Californian farmers were unable to move their products out, and Honda had to slow production at multiple North American plants because it couldn’t bring parts in. In 2024, we saw strikes on the East and Gulf Coasts that not only threatened the economy, but they also raised the stakes for the Presidential candidates.
The difference 10 years makes is in the cause of the strike. In 2015, it was arbitration over workplace disputes, but by 2024, the threat posed by job-replacing automation was foremost in the minds of union workers. If only 10 years took us from arbitration to automation, it is hard to think that automation will still be on the sidelines another decade into the future.
Regulations & Resilience
One of the top supply chain regulatory concerns in 2015 was the safe handling of lithium batteries. Often used in consumer electronics and medical devices, lithium batteries were (and still are) associated with fires on both cargo and passenger aircraft. The desire to safely ship products that contain them and address any fires that might result led to new U.S. Department of Transportation guidelines for land, air, and ocean shipping. The regulation specified how batteries and products containing batteries needed to be packaged and labeled for shipping, including which modes of transportation required more or less oversight.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the 2024 regulatory focus was on resilience. President Biden signed the Executive Order on White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience on June 14th, allowing for the designation of “critical” and “essential” goods, materials, and infrastructure that are needed for the sake of national security and economic health. Should the supply or availability of these goods and infrastructure be bought into question for any reason, additional Federally supported actions are available for the Council to take.
Stagnant Sustainability
Of all the changes I noticed between 2015 and today, the least impressive was sustainability. I believe I expected to find content and initiatives that would reveal what a rudimentary grasp we had of environmental and social impact – but that was not the case. While ESG was not yet in use an as acronym, groups such as the United Nations Global Compact were already in their second year of reporting on sustainability. If we were to change the date on the document, very little about the report would need to change to bring it up to date.
If our approach to sustainability has not changed, our motivation has. In many cases, regulations are being introduced to force the transition away from fossil fuels, starting with heavy duty truck emissions. On March 29th, the Environmental Protection Agency introduced its Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Heavy-Duty Vehicles – Phase 3. Hitting the over-the-road supply chain directly, class 8 truck manufacturers will have emissions reduction targets to hit starting with the 2027 model year, which is now just over a year from hitting dealer lots.
The major themes found in supply chain news stories and the top priorities in supply chain decision making remain the same, but where we focus within them has changed significantly. Whether it is digital transformation, the role of human labor, regulatory compliance, or sustainability, supply chain management continues to embrace the latest innovations and developments in pursuit of ever greater performance.
Additional Reading
Aronow, Stan, Mike Burkett, Jim Romano, and Kimberly Nilles. “2015 Gartner Supply Chain Top 25: 3 Key Trends.” Material Handling 247, September 21, 2015. https://www.materialhandling247.com/article/2015_gartner_supply_chain_top_25_3_key_trends/legacy_supply_chain_services.
Clark, Amy. “A Look Back at 2015 for Supply Chains.” Supply & Demand Chain Executive, January 4, 2016. https://www.sdcexec.com/safety-security/risk-compliance/article/12154536/elementum-a-look-back-at-2015-for-supply-chains
McKeefry, Hailey Lynne. “EBN’s Top 10 Supply Chain Stories for 2015.” EPSNews, January 5, 2016. https://epsnews.com/2016/01/05/ebns-top-10-supply-chain-stories-for-2015/.
United Nations Global Compact and BSR, Supply Chain Sustainability, (2015), https://d306pr3pise04h.cloudfront.net/docs/issues_doc%2Fsupply_chain%2FSupplyChainRep_spread.pdf.
Noteworthy Milestones/Launches of Resource Offerings 2015 – 2025
As Kelly has stated, it has been ten years since we wrote our book and we continue to analyze and write about key supply chain concepts and market resource trends. My review highlights noteworthy milestones and/or launches of offerings that have moved supply market intelligence forward over the last ten years. In addition, I have included three trending resource areas that will continue into 2025. Please note this is a high-level view, not intended to be comprehensive, and provider launches listed are for example purposes only.
Growth and Evolution of Risk Solutions: ESG, Geopolitical, and Cybersecurity – In the last ten years ESG went mainstream. When our book was published, several key resources were already on the market including EcoVadis, which continues to be a key supplier sustainability ratings solution. The IntegrityNext platform was launched in 2016 and Prewave’s AI-enhanced platform in 2019. Carbon emissions assessment resources emerged and increased, such as Supplyframe’s Electronics Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) for electronic parts. The globalization movement grew and along with it the need for supplier location data that assesses multiple risk categories such as political, societal (humanity), economic, governance, infrastructure, corruption, and environmental. PRISM launched in 2020 and provides geopolitical risk analysis through its NextRisk platform. There was a surge in country risk index announcements by private sector providers and global non-profit organizations. Key cybersecurity risk assessment providers BitSight and SecurityScorecard were already established by 2015. SecurityScorecard is transitioning to a Supply Chain Detection and Response (SCDR) provider.
Monitoring, Mapping, and Visualization of Supply Chain – These resources continue to evolve with providers launching and upgrading offerings that include real-time monitoring and predictive analytic capabilities. At the time of the book’s publication, riskmethods (now Sphera SCRM) was emerging and allowed for the identification of multi-tier (not just first tier) supply chain risk. Resilinc’s (2010) AI-powered platform continues to evolve. In 2021, Resilience360 and Riskpulse integrated to form Everstream and offers an AI and analytics platform that scores risks at the material, supplier, and facility location.
Market Consolidation and Rise of Mega Intelligence Providers – The supply intelligence market is no different than other markets when it comes to consolidation. One of the biggest merger announcements in 2020 was between IHS Markit, with an enterprise value of $44 billion, and S&P Global. BvD was acquired by Moody’s in 2017, bringing along its private company financial and ownership data database, Orbis. Fastmarkets consolidated commodities data into a single source by incorporating long-standing brands such as Metal Bulletin Group, American Metal Market, RISI, and FOEX. Expana, in 2024, integrated Mintec and Urner Barry, among others, to become a powerhouse food pricing and commodities intelligence provider.
Partner Ecosystems and Marketplaces – Providers realized the power of open platforms and offered add-on and/or integrated intelligence and capabilities through advantageous partnerships with other providers. In 2021, Coupa launched its App Marketplace and current intelligence partners include The Smart Cube, Beroe, and ProcurementIQ, to name a few. Digital marketplaces connect product and service buyers with suppliers and streamline the procurement process and B2B vertical sourcing hubs, such as Valdera for raw materials, are experiencing growth.
Analytics and Realtime – By 2018 and 2019, we saw more and more offerings with analytics and AI capabilities that allowed users to capture comprehensive analyzed data in real-time. Farmers Business Network (FBN) allows farmers to share and receive field intelligence and analysis to form their own strategies. Commodities intelligence provider ICIS launched an enhanced customer platform with real-time news stories and Mintec launched Mintec Analytics, which provided price information for 11,000+ commodities with advanced analytics tools.
AI Takes Off – Intelligence providers, with their solutions, embraced machine learning, natural language processing and AI cognitive capabilities in the late 2010s. ChatGPT, a large language model (LLM) trained by OpenAI, exploded on the scene in late 2022 and soon launches materialized featuring AI assistants. Procurement intelligence provider Beroe unveiled Abi, its AI-powered digital market analyst in 2020 and in 2023 the integration of ChatGPT and Abi. Attention turned to LLMs trained on domain specific data for higher quality results, especially for disciplines such as law and medicine. LexisNexis launched Nexis+ AI, which utilizes its deep well of licensed news publications and corporate data on millions of companies.
COVID-19 Response – Most supply-related market intelligence providers offered (temporarily) free and specialized offerings in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. In addition, new solutions were being introduced at a pace not seen before, creating a new COVID-19 intelligence pop-up market. For example, Everest Group’s COVID-19 Dynamic Tracker tracked the leading offshore and nearshore locations that were being impacted and Tealbook made available free vendor reports for organizations needing to find new suppliers. In 2022, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York unveiled the Global Supply Chain Pressure Index as a response to COVID-related supply chain disruptions.
Supply Market Intel and the Procuretech Boom – Procurement tech startups exploded on the scene in the last 4-5 years with many introducing innovative ways of supplying and/or integrating supplier and market risk data to help form intelligence. New events and resources emerged to fill a void in the space, such as DPW (Digital Procurement World), an event founded by Matthias Gutzmann; ProcureTech (Lance Younger, CEO and founder) with its Proctech100 list of top pioneering solutions; and Dr. Elouise Epstein’s (Kearney) Procurement Tech Solution spider chart, first created in 2020. Spend Matters launched its SolutionMap offering for procurement technology buyers as early as 2017.
Resource Trends 2024 – 2025
Three resource announcement trend areas to note as we go into 2025 are deglobalization, end-end-compliance visibility, and Agentic AI.
Deglobalization – Manufacturing is increasingly returning to North America representing a major shift in global production of goods and operations. With the growing trend of reshoring, it is likely we will see new offerings that directly address challenges to be faced, such as higher labor costs, shortage of specialty skilled workers, and regulatory concerns. Current resources to help with these challenges include the Reshoring Initiative, which publishes an annual U.S. reshoring trends report; Kearney’s Annual Reshoring Index, which tracks manufacturing reshoring activity from Asia; BEA’s GDP by State, which measures the economies of each state; the County Economic Performance Index (CEPI), which identifies regions that are more prone to disruptions; and Best States for Manufacturing (Site Selection Group), which scores states based on access to qualified labor, competitive costs, and strategic geographic positioning. Current country risk indices can be used for nearshoring and/or friendshoring efforts.
End-To-End Compliance Visibility – Look for continued solution announcements in 2025 that offer comprehensive end-to-end supply chain risk and compliance coverage. Sphera’s Supply Chain Transparency (SCT) provides end-to-end visibility for supply chain risk, sustainability and regulatory compliance. Mitratech, historically a provider in the legal and compliance space, released new AI-powered features in its recently acquired Prevalent platform. Sayari’s new Signal offering, when integrated with Sayari Graph allows users to identify high-risk entities before being flagged by regulators.
AI Agents and Agentic AI – For intelligence gathering and analysis, providers are starting to offer solutions with autonomous AI capabilities that efficiently collect and analyze data from multiple sources and apply critical insights. In November 2024, Dun & Bradstreet and IBM unveiled D&B Ask Procurement, an AI discovery assistant for supplier risk that is powered by IBM watsonx Orchestrate and watsonx.ai technology with an agentic AI framework.
Image by Vilius Kukanauskas from Pixabay
