Supply Chain Risk Solutions: A Market Overview

At ChainLink we have been researching and writing about supply chain risk for over a decade.

Lately, it seems there has been a crescendo of attention paid to this area. In spite of that, there is a dearth of cogent market definitions and good descriptions of the types of solutions available.

Part of the reason for this void is the very broad range and variety of supply chain risks, which makes it difficult for solution providers to create a comprehensive service or solution and makes it challenging for analysts to describe and frame the whole solutions landscape.

After working on many risk management projects across many industries, as well as ongoing research for our clients, we have gained direct working knowledge of these various risks and their corresponding solutions.

From this we have developed a framework for the Supply Chain Risk Management solutions market. We divide the supply chain risk solutions market into Core, Supporting, and Ancillary solutions:

• Core: Platforms focused exclusively or primarily on supply chain and supplier risks.
• Supporting: Applications focused on one specific area of supply chain risk, such as cargo theft, product quality, IP theft, anti-counterfeiting, and so forth. These generally support or integrate with one of the core platform segments.
• Ancillary: Enterprise solutions that primarily perform other functions (such as managing transportation or demand) but include some elements that help manage supply chain risk (such as on-time delivery or demand volatility).