Proxima Explores the State of Global Supply Chain Resilience
Disruption is no longer happening as a one-off event – instead, it is an ongoing upheaval of business operations.
Though this has led business leaders to move from prioritising efficiency to prioritising resilience, many leaders are failing to execute their plans.
Exploring key concerns and barriers to resilience, Proxima, part of Bain & Company, has released its Global Supply Chain Resilience Outlook report. In it, leaders take a look at leading concerns such as cyber resilience and AI.
Leaders who have the ambition but lack the resources or know-how can hear from industry leaders at Supply Chain LIVE: The London Summit, with a dedicated Risk and Resilience panel.
- CEOs are willing to pay a mean uplift of 17.3% to ensure supply chain resilience
- 56% of CEOs say 11-20% of their revenue would be at risk if their top three suppliers were disrupted for two weeks
- 51% of CEOs say AI is delivering measurable value for risk monitoring
- Less than 40% of businesses have real-time visibility
Changing priorities
In today's modern world, supply chain resilience is a key focus.
Over the last five years, the world has seen the global pandemic, as well as its subsequent impact, the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine war, shortages in semiconductor manufacturing, closure of the Strait of Hormuz, blockage in the Suez Canal, Trump's tariffs and the impact of climate change. These events have all had a significant impact on how businesses can operate, with new routes being formed, alliances being broken and new suppliers demonstrating their capabilities.
As ongoing trade disputes, wars, bottlenecks and re-drawn trade routes take place, supply chains around the world are unable to plan. Instead, they are being forced to react to this uncertainty and attempt to mitigate the impact.
However, by prioritising resilience, supply chain leaders are beginning to withstand shocks, having predicted some level of disruption or developed various scenario-based solutions.
Despite this, business leaders are not optimistic about their ability to maintain operations amid turbulence, Proxima finds. The Global Supply Chain Resilience Outlook uses insights from more than 500 CEOs from businesses that generate more than US$500m in annual revenue across the UK, USA, Australia, Singapore and Germany.
In the survey, leaders demonstrate a willingness to spend more, but a lack of confidence in their ability to cope. More than half (51%) of CEOs stated that they would be unable to maintain day-to-day operations for more than three weeks, without disruption, if a major shock were to occur. This demonstrates a lack of solid strategy behind the ambition.
“It is no secret that businesses are navigating a period of intense supply chain uncertainty. This research shows that CEOs are still very alert to disruption risk and that they are placing an increasing emphasis on building sustainable supply chain resilience to counteract," explains Simon Geale, Executive Vice President at Proxima.
“CEOs are further recognising the substantial costs and vulnerabilities their companies could face from supply chain disruption, and it is now clear many are willing to pay a premium to guard against that risk. Resilience has become a boardroom topic and a price worth paying.”
Looming threats
The ways in which disruption has impacted supply chain strategy cannot be ignored. In previous years, key focuses for supply chain and procurement teams were pointed towards cost savings. Rather than focusing on a long-term plan, many strategies focused on short-term gains.
Now, leaders are ready to spend more money in order to protect their assets – though this will translate to long-term cost savings. In the Proxima report, 72% of CEOs said they would accept a cost increase of more than 10% on their current third-party suppliers in order to guarantee resilience.
These extra costs would come from cost-saving measures (38%), passing the price onto customers (35%), or absorbing the cost through reduced margins (26%).
This dedication to third-party resilience comes at a time of increased cyber threats. As businesses are needing to implement AI and other digital tools in order to meet demand, this exposes them to cyber attacks. In the last two years, 45% of global supply chains have been impacted by cyber threats, whether the attack was an internal or supplier-based one.
In 2025, JLR had to close production at its Solihull, Halewood and Wolverhampton plants due to a crippling cyberattack. Thousands of businesses were impacted, with production halted for several weeks.
Following this, supply chain cybersecurity has been a more significant priority, with 42% of businesses having conducted full cyber resilience stress tests across their critical suppliers in the past 12 months. Despite this, only 35% of businesses have real-time visibility into the cyber risk exposure of their suppliers.
This shows a significant gap in translating ambition into action – though leaders understand the importance of building resilience, they are failing at the last hurdle.
At Supply Chain LIVE, business leaders aiming to integrate resilience strategies can gain key insights from industry experts at the Risk and Resilience panel.
Resilience has become a boardroom topic and a price worth paying.
Risk and resilience at Supply Chain LIVE
Those hoping to gain insights into developing supply chain resilience will not want to miss Supply Chain LIVE: The London Summit. The event is hosted by BizClik and Supply Chain Digital on 8-9 September at the QEII Centre in Westminster. Here, leaders can gain key insights into navigating risk and building resilience.
More than 1,000 attendees will gather to learn from 50+ speakers about the biggest challenges they are facing and the most innovative solutions.
The Supply Chain Risk & Resilience panel:
Date: 8 September
Time: 12:15-13:00 BST
Location: Supply Chain Stage
