Supply Chain Leaders See Technology as Key to Growth

Descartes Systems Group released findings from its study, ‘What Companies are Doing to Tackle Escalating Global Supply Chain Challenges’. The study shows that 74% of the supply chain and logistics leaders surveyed view technology as fundamental or highly important to their organization’s growth strategy in the face of rising global trade challenges, such as tariffs and trade barriers, supply chain disruptions and geopolitical instability. This number jumps to 88% for companies expecting greater than 15% growth over the next two years. In addition, 59% consider technology as extremely or very important to provide a competitive advantage in international trade.

When considering what technology capabilities are expected to help companies involved in international trade enable business growth and gain a competitive advantage, 36% cited global trade intelligence as the top capability required to deliver the greatest value in the next two years. This was followed by global trade analytics at 27% and by supply chain mapping at 26%.

Results also showed that respondents across all industries agreed that global trade intelligence was the top technology capability expected to deliver the greatest value over the next two years, including, for example, in manufacturing (40%), wholesale and distribution (44%), finance and insurance (38%), and retail (30%) sectors.

Tariffs and Trade Barriers

“For companies in diverse industries, global trade has become much more complex, with many new challenges to traditional business operations,” said Jackson Wood (pictured), Director, Industry Strategy at Descartes. “As businesses contend with tariffs and trade barriers, geopolitical instability, supply chain disruptions and compliance requirements, technology tools can help them build greater agility and resilience into their supply chains to compete more effectively.”

Descartes and SAPIO Research surveyed 978 supply chain intelligence leaders in key trading nations across Europe, North and South America, and Asia-Pacific. The goal was to understand the strategies, tactics and technologies used by companies involved in international trade to help gain a competitive advantage and ensure continued business growth, and to identify if these varied by factors such as country, industry, company size and business growth. Respondents are members of company leadership teams, from management level to Chief Executive Officer or Owner. To learn more, read the study What Companies are Doing to Tackle Escalating Global Supply Chain Challenges.

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Tariffs and Trade Barriers as Top Concern of Supply Chain Leaders

Descartes Systems Group, a global leader in uniting logistics-intensive businesses in commerce, released findings from its 2024 Supply Chain Intelligence Report: Escalating Challenges for Global Supply Chain Leaders survey, which examined the most significant global trade challenges facing logistics and supply chain leaders today. The study showed that 48% of respondents identified rising tariffs and trade barriers as their top concern, closely followed by supply chain disruptions at 45% and geopolitical instability at 41%. Moreover, tariffs and trade barriers ranked as the priority issue regardless of company size, as respondents at companies with less than 250 employees, 251-500, 501-1,000, 1,001-50,000 and 50,000+ employees all cited it as the most significant issue they are currently facing.

These challenges and others (see Figure 1) highlight the need among organizations involved in international trade to sharpen their supply chain analytics practices to help build more resilient supply chain networks, including having robust, technology-enabled insights to keep pace with frequent and complex tariff updates, quickly find new markets, secure better sources of supply and acquire timely and high quality competitive intelligence.

Figure 1: Respondents’ top challenges in international trade operations

 

Results also showed that the impact of top global trade challenges on organizations can potentially vary by factors other than company size, including business growth, country and industry. For example, tariffs and trade barriers were more concerning for companies expecting greater than 15% growth (51%) than for those companies with shrinking/limited to no growth (43%).
“Evolving tariffs and trade policies are one of a number of complex issues requiring organizations to build more resilience into their supply chains through compliance, technology and strategic planning,” said Jackson Wood (pictured), Director, Industry Strategy at Descartes. “With the potential for the incoming U.S. administration to impose new and additional tariffs on a wide variety of goods and countries of origin, U.S. importers may need to significantly re-engineer their sourcing strategies to mitigate potentially higher costs.”

Non tariff trade barriers

Descartes and SAPIO Research surveyed 978 supply chain intelligence leaders in key trading nations across Europe, North and South America, and Asia-Pacific. The goal was to understand the nature of the global trade challenges they were facing and to identify if concerns varied by factors such as country, industry, company size and business growth. Respondents are members of company leadership teams, from management level to Chief Executive Officer or Owner. To learn more, read the 2024 Supply Chain Intelligence Report: Escalating Challenges for Global Supply Chain Leaders report.

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