In early 2024, the International Monetary Fund reported that Suez Canal trade dropped by 50% year over year in the first two months. Ships were rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope, adding 10 or more days per delivery. Then came the strikes on Iran, the threat of Hormuz closure, and another wave of rerouting decisions made overnight.

Most retailers and distributors knew what needed to happen. The problem was their systems didn't. That gap between what experienced teams understand and what legacy infrastructure can show them is a problem arising from longstanding structural deficiencies. The disruption just made the situation impossible to ignore.

ERP, WMS, TMS and planning systems are built around assumptions: standard routes, lead times, supplier rules and replenishment cycles. Those assumptions are encoded deeply in workflows, reporting logic and how stock status is calculated and displayed.

When shipping routes collapse, those assumptions don't update. A rerouted shipment becomes simply "late." The system can’t tell you whether that stock is available, blocked, duplicated across two purchase orders, already allocated to a customer, or still being forecasted to arrive on its original date.

In response, teams do what they always do when the system fails them: They build spreadsheets. They create side trackers, manual exception lists, and shared files that capture what the system can’t. Those spreadsheets keep the lights on, but they create new problems in the form of duplicate data, inconsistent inputs, and decisions made based on different versions of the same information.

This pattern could be seen across furniture, grocery, pharmaceuticals, fashion, and B2B distribution. The industry didn't matter — the pattern was the same.

One supplier of furniture, home, and textiles faced a sudden breakdown in its inbound flow. The legacy ERP could only show purchase orders as being late. It couldn't give planners a usable view of which goods were still in transit, which were at risk, which were already allocated to customers, and which needed immediate review.

As a result, sales teams were working from outdated arrival assumptions. Warehouse teams had incomplete inbound plans. Planners were at risk of issuing duplicate replenishment orders because original purchase orders looked stalled but hadn't been formally closed.

To solve the problem, the company implemented a working layer on top of its existing systems. It pulled together open purchase orders, warehouse stock, shipment updates, sales allocations and planner notes. It matched container data to reduce duplicate records. It gave planners a single birds-eye view: available, allocated, at risk and blocked for review.

The legacy systems stayed in place. What changed was that the team finally had a layer that matched its actual operating reality.

Replacing an ERP takes 12 to 24 months and significant capital. During that time, the business still has to run. And when a disruption hits — whether it’s geopolitical, seasonal or demand-driven — the business has to adapt in days, not months.

The companies that moved fastest during the Suez disruption were the ones that could build a working layer above their existing infrastructure quickly enough to match the changed reality.

A pharmaceutical distributor cut duplicate data entry by 60% to 70% in the first week, by consolidating exception views across ERP, distribution center stock, shipment signals, and expiry-sensitive inventory into one ranked queue. Human planners then decided what to act on. The system gave them clarity, but the judgment stayed with them.

Disruptions are merely the visible version of a problem that exists in stable conditions as well. Every time a retailer launches a new channel, enters a new market or changes a supplier relationship, it faces a version of the same gap: existing systems that weren’t designed for the new operating reality. Yet replacing them isn’t a realistic short-term option.

The companies building resilience now are creating modular layers above their core infrastructure — layers that can consolidate data, surface exceptions, and give experienced teams a cleaner way to act.

Antons Sapriko is founder and executive chairman of scandiweb.