Only 19% of retail supply chain decisions land as planned

Kallikor has published research showing that only 19% of major retail supply chain decisions are delivered as intended. The study surveyed 200 senior supply chain leaders in the UK and US.

The findings highlight a gap between the scale of supply chain changes retailers are pursuing and their ability to judge the impact of those decisions across complex operations. Nearly nine in 10 respondents expect to deliver at least one step-change decision in the next 12 months, including network redesign, automation and service transformation.

More than four in five significant strategic decisions run into problems during delivery. The research found that 92% of leaders had seen unintended performance trade-offs emerge elsewhere in the supply chain after major decisions, while 63.5% said they could not assess decisions end to end in operational reality.

Those issues appear to be affecting appetite for change. Leaders reported that major decisions can take up to 18 months, and 74% said slow decision-making reduces willingness to pursue bold change.

Complexity rises

The report suggests many retail supply chains are now too interconnected for traditional planning methods to capture the full effects of strategic choices. Respondents said they are often forced to choose between a high-level strategic view and a detailed operational view, without a practical way to combine the two.

As a result, businesses are exposed to implementation problems that emerge only after a decision has been approved and funded. Many major initiatives then require rework, are scaled back, or are reversed.

The research also found that organisations are struggling to build on earlier work. Models are often not reused across initiatives, limiting institutional learning and leaving decision-makers to rely on assumptions rather than evidence.

Mark Simpson, former chief supply chain officer at ASDA, described the issue as one that often surfaces away from the original decision point.

"The sorts of decisions involved in supply chain transformations rarely fail in a clean, obvious way. What I've seen is that the impact shows up somewhere else in the business, often only after you've already committed. The challenge is moving the business forward without creating unintended consequences you couldn't see at the point of decision. In many organisations, that comes back to how those decisions are evaluated. The approaches haven't kept pace with the complexity of the systems they're trying to change," he said.

Boardroom pressure

Reputational risk also emerged as a major constraint on decision-making. Nine in 10 leaders said major supply chain decisions carry reputational risk, and 60% ranked personal or reputational risk among the main barriers to making big calls.

The pressure is particularly acute because senior supply chain executives are often required to sponsor large investment programmes and justify expected results at board level before they have clear evidence of how those decisions will play out in practice.

Ross Eggleton, former group director of logistics, supply chain and technology at Morrisons, said this pressure can lead companies to delay or dilute necessary change.

"As a retail supply chain leader, you're often being asked to make and defend high-stakes decisions without a clear view of how they'll actually play out in practice. That creates real pressure. It shows up in how decisions get made, or don't. You see decisions slowed down, softened, or avoided altogether, even when more fundamental change is clearly needed," he said.

The study covered respondents at head level and above from retail organisations with turnover of at least GBP £500 million. It was conducted by Arlington Research and drew evenly from the UK and US markets.

Kallikor, which works with retailers including Morrisons, B&M, Primark and Nisbets, said the results point to a broader problem with the decision-making environment rather than individual leadership performance.

Jonathan Barrett, chief executive officer of Kallikor, said the current tools used by supply chain leaders no longer reflect the complexity of modern retail networks.

"Supply chain leaders are being asked to make decisions of a different order from those that came before, but the tools available to them have not kept pace. They were built for a simpler, more stable operating environment. Leaders are being underserved by what exists, and our research shows the consequences of that gap are significant. Fewer than one in five major decisions are delivered as intended. That is not a leadership problem. It is a decision environment problem, and it is entirely solvable," he said.