2026年采购和供应链领导者的4项战略要务

procurement & supply chainoutlook 2026 Navigating the AI Revolution, Economic Shifts, and the Sponsored by: table of contents Executive Summary_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________3About the Contributor______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________3The New Equilibrium: A Confounding Environment________________________________________________________________________________________________4Pillar 1: The AI Revolution__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________5Pillar 2: Financial Fluency___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________6Pillar 3: The Global Footprint______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________7Pillar 4: Operational Agility________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________8 procurement & supply chainoutlook 2026 executive summary Above all, it showed that winning teamsin 2026 compress the time from signal todecision to action, using AI as governed Procurement and supply chain leaders are entering 2026 inwhat GEP calls “the unknown” – an environment where theheadline macro indicators look calmer, but volatility is morefrequent, more local, and more policy-driven. AI is arrivingon top of years of shocks, while leaders still face two board- This webinar explored those questions through a macrolens and eight leadership themes, ranging from AIgovernance and culture to financial fluency, footprintstrategy, and operational agility. It highlighted the shift fromgeneric “copilots for everyone” toward domain-specific about thecontributor Joel JohnsonVice President, Consulting procurement & supply chainoutlook 2026 the new equilibrium:a confounding environment The macro story entering 2026 is deceptively calm: averagesare improving, inflation is easing, and growth is cooler butstable. Underneath those averages, however, volatility isbecoming more local, more driven by policy and trade Labor markets remain relatively tight, but momentum isfading, and immigration constraints in markets like the U.S. arebiting just as AI reshapes the skills mix. The practical messageis not to plan for a massive headcount swing, but to plan fora skills shift while using AI to strip out repetitive work and For procurement and supply chain leaders, that meansless emphasis on perfect forecasts and more emphasis on At the same time, data center expansion and electrificationmean the electricity grid and infrastructure readiness arebecoming strategic bottlenecks that must be treated as Inflation is projected to moderate overall, but tariffs andtrade decisions can quickly reignite price pressure inspecific categories. The real cost in those situations is notjust the new price point; it is the decision lag while teamsargue over last month’s data. Leaders are therefore moving from the webinar “In 2026, the averages are improving, but the volatilityis getting more local, more policy driven, and morefrequent – and it hits procurement and supply chain first.”“The real question leaders are hearing from boardsis, ‘How do we stay resilient without permanently Growth expectations around 3.1 percent globally maska post-stockpiling in some sectors, as demand that waspulled forward during recent disruptions now fades. Rather than trying to model every scenario, leading teamspre-agree on two or three "if-then" plays so they can movequickly when demand softens or trade frictions spike. In acooler growth environment, payment terms and working Joel JohnsonVice President, Consulting key suggestions Predefine macro playbooks with finance.Align a few "if-then" responses for demandshifts and trade actions so you can act indays instead of weeks. Stop treating pricing as an annual event. pricing cycles in exposed categories toreduce decision lag and margin surprises. procurement & supply chainoutlook 2026 pillar 1: the ai revolution Beyond controls, the cultural side of AI is often the realbottleneck. Survey data cited in the webinar showedthat about 70 percent of workers are AI experimentersdoing surface-level tasks, while fewer than 3 percent haveembedded AI into workflows in a way that drives realproductivity gains. Many employees report a “use case AI in procurement and supply chain is moving fromexperimentation to execution, from “talking” tools toagents that can actually act inside core workflows. Oncesystems can send supplier messages, create events,recommend awards, and draft contract clauses, the Governance, not algorithms, becomes the real Practical AI governance looks a lot like risk managementrather tha