According to kpmg.com, six interlocking trends will define supply chain leadership in 2026 — shifting focus from reactive resilience to proactive value creation, centralizing operations under Global Business Services (GBS), scaling AI beyond pilots into embedded enterprise platforms, advancing agentic procurement, and integrating Total Experience and Total Performance as unified strategic pillars.
Total Value as a strategic imperative
From a supply chain management perspective, Total Value shifts the organizational lens from merely navigating supply chain disruption to actively pursuing enterprise-wide value maximization. This strategic approach unites Total Experience and Total Performance to integrate critical business dimensions.
Total Experience
The strategic unification of customer, employee, partner, and digital interactions into one intelligent ecosystem. It’s not just about delighting customers; it’s about empowering every touchpoint to deliver value. Total Experience is built on five core principles:
- Customer centricity, with the supply chain being reoriented to instantly respond to actual customer needs, values and goals
- Data driven insights, with new metrics leveraged to predict supply and demand shifts and personalize customer experiences
- Seamless integration, where leaders from Commercial, Finance, Operations, and Procurement work with shared KPIs and goals to achieve the highest customer experience and optimal operational and financial outcomes
- Technology enablement, with teams leveraging automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven insights, and making the most of real-time visibility to exceed customer expectations – without negatively impacting operational performance or risk
- Employee empowerment, with tools and platforms that support rapid decision making, and a culture of ownership and innovation, and allowing employees more time for value-adding activities and customer engagement
Total Performance
Total Performance is about doing the right things, faster, smarter, more sustainably, aligned to the overarching objective of high-performing operational outcomes. Total Performance is the delivery of measurable outcomes across financial, operational, people, innovation and sustainability dimensions:
- Financial Performance, maximizing profitability, optimizing working capital and driving cost efficiencies whilst ensuring adequate risk mitigation
- Operational Excellence as the engine of Total Performance, focused on enhancing functional maturity through eliminating inefficiencies, standardizing workflows and improving agility to accelerate decision-making and execution of operational outcomes
- People Performance, with people being not only a key element of achieving Total Experience, but also the driving force behind supply chain success
- Innovation, not only understood as the adoption of new enabling technologies, but rather as a way of rethinking how value is delivered across all operations activities, for example through new fulfilment mindsets or the co-creation of new value drivers with trading partners and customers
- Sustainability as a core performance driver by impacting energy efficiency, sourcing decisions, supplier selection, and regulatory compliance
Total Value is achieved by strategically connecting the disparate parts of the business, identifying synergistic improvement opportunities, and leveraging technology and data to elevate both customer experience and operational performance across the entire enterprise.
Supply Chain as part of Global Business Services
The supply chain manages many transactions and reporting requirements, therefore is becoming the next function to be migrated within the Global Business Services (GBS) organization. This follows the centralization of other functions such as finance, HR, and IT. In the short term, this trend is playing out for major global operators, but it is likely to set the scene for others to follow. Supply chains have many repeatable, transactional, and scalable activities, making the function ripe to bring under one roof.
AI Scaling beyond proof of value
Throughout 2026, we expect to see many of the recent promises of AI in the supply chain become realities. Supply chains are likely to move from engaging standpoint AI solutions to prove their value, through to having AI embedded in platforms such as Source-to-Pay, and in supply chain planning and risk management tools driving efficiency and governance. The most mature supply chains should achieve ‘Connected Intelligence’, in which enterprise-wide AI links the supply chain with procurement, finance, ESG, HR, and CRM systems, forming an intelligent, autonomous ecosystem.
Agentic procurement
Building on the advancing role of AI in the supply chain, procurement (either situated within or aligned to supply chain functions) will be increasingly powered by Agentic AI. In 2026, three forces will converge to make this likely. The first is capability maturity, with agents not just producing insights, but actively performing tasks such as supplier evaluation, risk monitoring, and contract review. The second force is strategic pressure, with leaders focusing on embedding Agentic AI across the procurement lifecycle. The third force is operating model evolution, with digital procurement platforms evolving toward extreme automation, deep integration, and Agentic AI.
Source: kpmg.com
Compiled from international media by the SCI.AI editorial team.
