Half of large company chief executives believe their organisations would struggle to keep operating for more than three weeks if a major supply chain shock hit tomorrow, according to new research from Proxima that underlines how exposed global business still is to disruption.
The survey, which questioned more than 500 CEOs at companies with annual revenues above $500m in the UK, the US, Australia, Singapore and Germany, suggests resilience has become a board-level priority even...
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as costs remain a brake on action. Nearly three quarters of respondents said they would tolerate an increase of more than 10% in third-party supplier costs if that helped secure a more resilient supply chain, while the average uplift they were prepared to accept was 17.3%.
That willingness to pay, however, comes with hard choices. Proxima found that 38% of CEOs would look for savings elsewhere to offset the higher bill, 35% would pass the expense on to customers and 26% would absorb it through thinner margins.
The research also points to a growing gap between ambition and readiness. While 51% of CEOs said artificial intelligence is already delivering measurable value in supplier risk monitoring, many also said wider deployment is being held back by poor data quality, a lack of skills and uncertainty over return on investment. At the same time, only 35% said they had real-time visibility into the cyber risk of critical suppliers, even though 45% reported a supply chain disruption caused by a cyber incident in the past two years.
The vulnerability appears significant. More than half of those surveyed said that if their three most important suppliers were disrupted for two weeks, between 11% and 20% of revenue would be at risk. A further 24% estimated the danger at 21% to 40% of turnover.
Proxima said CEOs are also contending with several competing pressures at once. Conflict and geopolitical tensions, sustainability targets, regulatory demands, climate-related events, emerging technologies and protectionist policies such as tariffs were all cited by roughly similar shares of respondents as major financial challenges.
The findings fit a broader pattern seen across recent industry analysis. S&P Global has said supply chains have largely normalised since the disruption of the pandemic era, but warned that companies are still grappling with policy uncertainty, physical risks and the need for longer-term restructuring. Deloitte has likewise argued that businesses are trying to balance resilience with efficiency, with many reworking networks to be closer to customers and more adaptable to shocks.
Simon Geale, executive vice president at Proxima, said the findings show that boardrooms remain deeply conscious of disruption risk and increasingly willing to pay for protection. In a statement, he said resilience is now firmly a boardroom issue and, for many companies, worth the premium.
Proxima’s wider analysis argues that supply chain transparency, clearer risk appetite and better use of technologies such as AI and the internet of things will be central to turning resilience into a competitive advantage rather than a cost burden.
Source: Noah Wire Services
