Executives Overestimate Customer Trust in Supply Chains
The trust gap is on average 20% between leading suppliers and their customers
Supply chain executives significantly overestimate stakeholder trust in their supply chain capabilities and intentions, according to a new Deloitte Insights survey report titled “Is your supply chain trustworthy?” Of more than 1,000 executives from large global organizations surveyed, 89% on average who self-identified as leading suppliers said customers trust their supply chain operations, compared to just 68% on average of roughly 500 customers who said the same.
In looking more closely at the divide between executives self-identifying as leading suppliers versus customer perceptions of supplier trust, the gap was highest when measuring reliability in supply chains (25% gap; leading suppliers = 90%, customers = 65%), followed by humanity (e.g., treating workers, customers and other partners fairly and with respect; 24% gap, leading suppliers = 91%, customers = 67%), transparency (22% gap; leading suppliers = 85%, customers = 63%) and capability (e.g., ability to maintain operational consistency; 16% gap, leading suppliers = 91%, customers = 75%).
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“The supply chain trust gap is far bigger than our responding executives seem to realize, suggesting there are blind spots in key areas their customers care about,” said James Cascone, a Deloitte Risk & Financial Advisory partner and sustainability, climate and equity leader with a focus on supply chains, Deloitte & Touche LLP. “From the customer perspective, many COVID-19 pandemic-era supply chain challenges remain unresolved, despite improvements executives have worked hard to achieve. Unfortunately, such wide gaps in trust indicators like reliability and transparency against pre-pandemic expectations stand to worsen as new supply chain risks emerge.”
Nearly half (44%) of all supply chain executives surveyed expect to experience a supply chain shock in the next 24 months as a result of various external challenges including price volatility (46%), inflation (44%), resource shortages (e.g., labor and materials; 42% and 41% respectively), and geopolitical instability (32%). Executives ranked external challenges similarly across regions; however, those in North America were more likely to cite financial market instability and inflation as their primary challenge compared to Asia/Pacific (APAC) and Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA) where price volatility was top of mind for supply chain leaders.
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“With the potential for distrust to grow amid uncertain market conditions, it’s increasingly important that supply chain leaders find a way to shrink the gap,” said Michael Bondar, Deloitte Risk & Financial Advisory’s enterprise trust leader and a principal, Deloitte Transactions and Business Analytics LLP. “We see leading organizations working to identify and prioritize actions most likely to enhance the reliability and predictability of their supply chains — ranging from developing a digital thread to investing in other, advanced technical capabilities to help earn stakeholder trust, enhance business performance, and serve as a competitive differentiator.”
Executives who self-assessed their organizations as “leading suppliers” were 3.9 times more likely to have a fully deployed digital thread (27% versus 7% for non-leading suppliers) and 3.8 times more likely to use predictive analytics to forecast demand (38% versus 10% for non-leading suppliers). Leading suppliers were also 2.5 times more likely to have achieved 15% or higher annual growth rate in the last 12 months (38% versus 15% for non-leading suppliers) and 1.6 times more likely to say their organizations are resilient against external shocks or crises (34% versus 12% for non-leading suppliers).
“It seems that when executives prioritize improving supply chain trust, advancements result that extend well beyond trust-building alone,” continued Bondar.
