Supply chain leaders in Australia and New Zealand are rebalancing their priorities, with resilience and agility now edging out the long-standing focus on cost reduction, according to new IDC research sponsored by Blue Yonder.
The study found that 43 per cent of organisations in the two countries said cost efficiency had historically come before resilience in their networks, leaving them more exposed to shocks from supplier inflation, strained transport capacity and geopolitical...
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uncertainty. But the latest findings suggest that calculus is changing. Nearly half of respondents, 48 per cent, named greater agility as their top risk-reduction priority, while 45 per cent pointed to tighter integration between systems and trading partners as a key way to respond faster when disruption occurs.
Rising costs remain a major pressure point. IDC said 51 per cent of organisations are contending with higher supplier and transport expenses, while 43 per cent are worried about the impact of protectionism and tariffs on supply stability. For businesses that depend on long-haul logistics and cross-border sourcing, those pressures are pushing resilience from a desirable feature to a central operating requirement.
Stephanie Krishnan, associate vice president at IDC Asia/Pacific, said the region has moved beyond the basic problem of visibility. In her view, the harder task now is turning that visibility into coordinated action across teams, suppliers and systems. She said the organisations that gain an edge will be those able to make decisions in real time across their wider supply ecosystem.
The research also points to a growing role for artificial intelligence, particularly agentic AI systems that can help orchestrate actions across multiple enterprises. IDC said 32 per cent of supply chain leaders across Asia-Pacific identified AI and machine learning as the most important capability gap to close, and it expects the significance of agentic AI in supply chain operations to rise sharply over the next three years.
Blue Yonder argued that this reflects a broader shift in the region away from standalone visibility tools and towards platforms that combine data, collaboration and automated decision-making. Antonio Boccalandro, the company’s Asia-Pacific president, said businesses need to become more agile and resilient in turbulent conditions, and that visibility alone is no longer enough. In his view, the next phase of supply chain management will depend on systems that can convert insight into action across logistics partners, suppliers and internal operations.
That message mirrors wider IDC commentary across Asia-Pacific, where the consultancy has linked agentic AI to a broader technology reset spanning supply chains, manufacturing and CIO strategy. The emerging model is one of “intelligent orchestration”: not just tracking what is happening, but coordinating what should happen next. For companies in Australia and New Zealand, the implication is clear: resilience is no longer an add-on to efficiency, but a design principle shaping the future of supply chain strategy.
Source: Noah Wire Services
