Supply chain resilience is increasingly being shaped by how well organisations can see risk coming, diversify their supplier base and act on data quickly, according to Ivalua.
Speaking to EME Outlook, Ian Thompson, vice-president for Northern Europe at the procurement software company, said the era of depending on a narrow group of suppliers for critical inputs is ending. He pointed to geopolitical shocks, climate-related disruption and shipping bottlenecks as forces that are e...
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xposing weak points in global sourcing models.
Ivalua says its own research shows 62% of organisations believe their supply chains are unable to cope with shifting geopolitical conditions. The company argues that the problem is not a lack of data, but the opposite: information is often spread across disconnected systems, making it difficult for procurement teams to use it decisively.
Thompson said companies need contingency plans built around a broader supplier mix, covering different regions and risk profiles, rather than assuming they can rely on a handful of established partners. Recent shortages, including the pistachio squeeze cited by the company, have underscored how concentrated sourcing can leave buyers exposed.
Ivalua also says 23% of organisations have replaced suppliers in the Middle East over the past 12 months, a shift the company links to conflict in the region and disruption to shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz. Thompson said businesses looking to switch suppliers need tools that balance cost, quality, sustainability and risk, rather than making hurried substitutions that could create new vulnerabilities.
The company’s answer is a unified source-to-pay platform that brings together supplier, spend and risk data from internal and external sources. Ivalua says this gives procurement teams a single view of their supply base and makes it easier to spot alternatives, model disruption scenarios and move faster when conditions change.
Ivalua is also pushing the case for AI as a practical resilience tool rather than a future ambition. In a separate study, the company said organisations with fully deployed AI tools felt prepared for geopolitical risk, with 98% describing themselves as ready, compared with none of those without AI plans.
Thompson said generative AI and more autonomous agent-based tools can already help teams carry out rapid risk assessments, draft mitigation plans and analyse supplier exposure in ways that would have taken far longer using spreadsheets and manual processes. He said the next stage will be AI agents working more proactively inside procurement workflows, although he cautioned that the value of such systems still depends on clean, consistent underlying data.
For Ivalua, the broader message is that resilience now depends on visibility, collaboration and the ability to reconfigure sourcing decisions at speed. In a volatile environment, the companies best placed to absorb shocks, Thompson said, will be those that can turn supplier information into action before disruption becomes crisis.
Source: Noah Wire Services
