Resilience in the face of polycrisis-driven disruption

The pandemic was supposed to be a once-in-a-generation event, but it turns out ‘once-in-a-generation’ crises now happen every few months.

Six years on, it feels as though global supply chains have spent more time facing these types of crises than handling business as usual. From the war in Ukraine to US-imposed tariffs, and now the war in Iran disrupting not just fuel and logistics supply lines, but also the availability of critical raw materials like petrochemicals, gas, and fertilisers, sending yet another ripple through trade networks. The war has disrupted energy prices, critical shipping lanes, and the movement of raw materials.

The polycrisis is here to stay

McKinsey research conducted during the pandemic revealed that a single major disruption can cause companies to lose up to 45% of their annual earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA). Data from late 2025 pointed to global supply chain disruptions costing businesses around $184 billion annually.

In a recent industry survey, more than 78% of supply chain professionals anticipated that geopolitical dynamics, trade tariffs, and international trade regulations will impact their operations over the next one to two years. Nearly half (48%) said they were deeply concerned about the geopolitical climate, and almost all of them recognised supply chain challenges as a factor impacting their business growth.

Faced with the reality that geopolitical volatility and unprecedented market events are the new normal, organisations are once again restructuring their supply chains to try and cushion the shocks of a world where goods and materials no longer move cheaply or predictably across oceans and borders.

The pre-pandemic doctrine of the just-in-time supply chain has largely been abandoned, with operators turning instead to a just-in-case model reliant on inventory buffers. More stock does make supply chains more resilient in the face of delays and disruption, but holding on to excess inventory also cuts into cash flow, reducing an organisation’s ability to pivot when necessary. The uncomfortable reality is that embracing a just-in-case approach ends up being just another way that the global supply chain environment erodes business resilience.

So, what’s the solution?

Overcoming fragmented operations and zombie inventory

In the current climate of ever-rising inflation and polycrisis-driven disruption, resilience doesn’t come from tying up capital in a slow-moving ‘zombie inventory’. This legacy of a bygone era - obsolete collections of goods which tie up valuable warehouse space - eats into management time and energy, forcing them to find solutions for disposal and reducing capacity for more forward-thinking tasks.

Resilience in this scenario depends on accessing and leveraging better supply chain intelligence, and digitisation is the first step. An intelligent system of work (like OneAdvanced’s IQ platform) can be the link between disconnected channels in supply chain operations.

This disconnect between systems intended to improve productivity (and the operational realities they support) is a persistent challenge. Despite having access to more data than ever before, many industry leaders are being confronted with the reality that extensively digitising their operations has yet to translate into meaningful visibility increases or efficiency gains across their operation as a whole. The problem is fragmentation. While individual elements of the supply chain (warehousing, finance, workforce, fleet, etc) may be heavily digitised, these elements often remain heavily siloed. Fragmented processes and disconnected tools aren’t enough to give managers the visibility they need to navigate the new normal.   

Within supply chain operations, this fragmentation often manifests as a growing separation between operational activity and financial outcomes. When material cost data held within finance systems is disconnected from workforce capacity information, organisations risk making significant investment, procurement, and planning decisions using historical rather than predictive insights.

Unifying the digitised supply chain

The divide between frontline and back-office operations further compounds this issue. Drivers, warehouse operatives, and production staff frequently operate within systems that are disconnected from those used by finance and executive leadership. As a result, organisations can find it difficult to respond in an agile manner to changing conditions before being impacted.

Consider instead an operation where finance, procurement, and warehouse data are so tightly stitched together that it becomes possible to model a hit on the supply chain (a supplier failure, for example) before it happens. Achieving this capability depends less on accumulating more standalone applications and more on unifying existing digital tools within a single tech architecture.

When work is coordinated through a composable, connected platform like OneAdvanced IQ, data becomes continuously accessible, workflows integrate with one another more easily, and governance/regulatory compliance is upheld more consistently. The source-to-contract cycle is connected to real-time inventory and workforce availability. Decision-makers can access consistent, verified data that supports predictive orchestration. Shared data structures and common process frameworks enable activities to flow more efficiently between departments, reducing manual intervention and administrative overheads. A more unified infrastructure allows policies, controls, and risk management frameworks to be applied in a uniform manner across the organisation, strengthening compliance while reducing duplication of effort.

The upshot is that organisations that can reduce system fragmentation (i.e., those who can join up their digital dots, so to speak) will be much more capable of predicting and responding when market volatility turns into disruption for the supply chain. The method of embedding intelligent workflows is far more effective than stockpiling inventory when it comes to creating a resilient supply chain, providing a more complete picture and invaluable insights.

Inadequate forecasting/planning is the leading cause of excess inventory. When inflation rises and margins shrink, a just-in-case approach can cause just as many problems as it solves. An intelligence-based approach that unifies fragmented elements of the supply chain beneath a single predictive digital infrastructure can create the necessary visibility to boost efficiency (and ultimately succeed) in an increasingly imperilled supply chain landscape.