Three Fears Looming Over Supply Chains in 2021

Challenges Supply Chains Will Face in 2021

Operations and finance leaders have good reason to be fearful about the continued challenges supply chains will face in 2021.

With the Covid-19 pandemic still raging, governments across the world will do their best to control the societal and economic fallout.

Despite those efforts, the prospect of more lockdowns increased safety regulations, uneven vaccine rollouts, and the emergence of new virus variants still loom large over the business and their employees.

While there’s a reason for optimism as the developed vaccines show promise to curb the pandemic, even the best-run companies won’t control their own destinies until the headwinds dissipate.

It’s safe to assume that business conditions won’t even begin to normalize until 2022.

With the world in such an unsettled state, finance and operations leaders across all types of business can expect to spend most of this year battling economic uncertainty, rising costs, and sky-high customer expectations.

Three Top Challenges

1. Economic Uncertainty

2. Rising Costs

3. Sky-high Customer Expectations

The solution

In addressing these three challenges, you need to ask yourself these questions: At any moment, do you know the most important issues impacting your customers, partners, or products? Do you know who’s working on those issues, and are you confident that those issues won’t happen again? If you can’t answer “yes” to each of those questions at a moment’s notice, then your supply chain is not primed for success. And if the answer is “it’s on so-and-so’s spreadsheet,” then you’re definitely in trouble.