Thriving in the age of disruption requires resilience, say the authors of a new report from Gartner Inc. This is currently a well-publicized idea, but in order to achieve resilience, chief procurement officers (CPOs) must collaborate with stakeholders inside and outside their organization, and begin thinking and acting like CEOs and chief supply chain officers to influence and drive changes beyond the limitations of their current priorities, such as cost and operations management.

That’s one of the conclusions reached by the authors of “Shockproof Your Supply Chain for the New Age of Disruption,” Koray Kose, Jorge Lopez, Malcolm Murray and Joanne Joliet.

Resilience is "not achieved in a silo," the authors say, and requires timely and holistic strategy executions into three distinguished areas:

“Amid continual disruptions, CPOs are unable to devise long-term strategies for dealing with a disruptive world, think beyond procurement to envision products and innovations that can be manufactured despite disruption, and contemplate investment in processes providing a competitive edge,” the report said.

The key to improvement will be technological sophistication, in particular the digitization of business processes and data gathering.

“By 2030, 80% of companies will have digital and physical business synthesized and executed in supply ecosystems,” the report said. “Resilience and risk management will be the key competitive advantages and differentiators for success."