Ride the wave: Time your investment in supply chain technologies to maximize momentum

Ride the wave: Time your investment in supply chain technologies to maximize momentum

Insights from the Gartner® Hype Cycle™ for Supply Chain Planning Technologies, 2025

Sixty-three percent of all supply chains are losing value when faced with disruption today.¹ Let's repeat that: Sixty. Three. Percent. If that's not enough to give you chills, then perhaps this is: the volume and pace of disruption don't seem to be decreasing. Nine out of 10 chief supply chain officers believe their supply chains are in a prolonged state of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, also known as VUCA.¹

But we're not here to kick you when you're down. Circumstances may seem dire, but as the saying goes, it's always darkest before the dawn. While disruption may be inevitable, value loss-whether in the form of wasted time, resources, or opportunities-is not.

Focusing on what you can control: Your supply chain

You can't control the weather, geopolitical turmoil, or trade wars. You might be able to influence customers or demand. Realistically, though, the biggest opportunity for making change and recovering value starts in your supply chain.

In our own experience, we've seen that companies that make investments in innovation during times of disruption outperform their peers across key financial metrics, both during and after disruption.² The key is making calculated investments to not just weather the storm but outperform through it.

Supply chain leaders everywhere recognize the need for their supply chains to have speed, agility, confidence, and power.

• Speed: to detect and respond to changes as they happen
• Agility: to pivot when disruptions get in the way
• Confidence: to make decisions that will benefit the business and create new opportunities
• Power: to unlock the greatest value in any scenario

But knowing how, when, and what to invest in to unlock these values can feel like opening a can of worms. If you're already hurting from disruption, the promise of digital transformation can feel outweighed by the perceived risks: Would the time and energy spent assessing and selecting the right technologies be better spent elsewhere? Will the upfront costs be recovered by later gains in efficiency and performance? What if the technologies don't live up to their promises?

Pressure-test the latest technologies before you invest

That's where the Gartner® Hype Cycle™ for Supply Chain Planning Technologies, 2025 comes in. The Hype Cycle, "guides leaders in balancing mature and emerging technologies to enhance decision making, leverage data, and align planning for improved resilience and end-to-end performance."¹

It highlights emerging technologies like agentic AI, short-term demand sensing, and digital supply chain twins-tools that can help you navigate the VUCA environment and gain a competitive edge.

If you're ready to go from losing value to gaining momentum, it's time to download the report and discover the technologies that will truly make a difference to your supply chain and your business.

1. Gartner, Hype Cycle for Supply Chain Planning Technologies, 2025.
2. Kinaxis customers link digital transformation to financial success

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