As companies face rising customer expectations and tighter scrutiny across global supply chains, State of Flux’s 2025 Global Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) Research finds suppliers now shape more than half of the end-customer experience. Yet only a small share of firms have the systems and culture to manage these critical partnerships effectively. The result is a widening divide between brands cultivating supplier-led innovation and those still anchored in transactional cost cutting, a gap increasingly reflected in service reliability, resilience, and competitive performance.
Why Supplier Experience Now Equals Customer Experience
Suppliers now influence more than half of the end-customer experience, but only 6% of organizations have reached mature SRM capability. The study, now in its 17th year and based on insight from 484 procurement and supply chain professionals across 335 companies in 13 industries, highlights a widening divide between ambition and execution in how firms manage strategic supplier partnerships.
This year’s theme, “From Customer of Choice to Customer Delight,” reflects an evolution in procurement strategy. Organizations are moving beyond seeing suppliers as cost levers and instead recognizing them as co-owners of brand reputation, innovation, and service delivery. Still, the report finds most firms lack the structures and behaviors needed to extract value or mitigate risk at scale.
Alan Day, Chairman and Founder of State of Flux, notes that suppliers increasingly shape customer outcomes in real time, from service reliability to innovation and service quality. “Suppliers are now an extension of the customer experience,” he explains. Those that invest in deep collaboration, shared performance goals, and trust-based governance are already seeing measurable advantages.
Examples from Vodafone, Air Canada, US Steel, Currys, and Auckland Transport illustrate varied paths to SRM maturity. Vodafone has staged SRM adoption across its global footprint — building core tools, piloting new workflows, then scaling across markets and partner networks. Early results show improved stakeholder alignment and value realization throughout the contract lifecycle.
Air Canada pairs joint planning with performance governance to strengthen service, speed, and quality, reinforcing how SRM supports both customer-facing and operational metrics. US Steel and Currys demonstrate SRM’s role as a platform for co-innovation and mutual performance improvement, rather than a compliance mechanism.
Rethinking Resilience Through Supplier-Led Value
Supplier performance now extends beyond cost, quality, and delivery. In many industries, supplier personnel make up more than half the workforce delivering core services. Ethical lapses, labor risk, or safety incidents in supplier networks surface quickly in customer feedback, and in regulatory filings. State of Flux identifies three capabilities that differentiate leaders:
– Strong SRM frameworks and cross-functional governance
– Metrics tied to customer and business outcomes, not just procurement KPIs
– Formal mechanisms to co-develop innovation and resilience
According to the research, success requires a mindset shift: from managing suppliers to partnering with them. As organizations accelerate digital programs, adapt global footprint strategies, and increase sustainability oversight, supplier-enabled value creation becomes a core performance lever.
Recent global data reinforces this trajectory. Leading companies are tying SRM to digital procurement platforms, using supplier innovation programs to speed product launches, and linking supplier carbon reporting to customer-facing sustainability claims. These shifts signal that SRM is becoming foundational to both competitive advantage and regulatory assurance.
Across Europe (44% of respondents), North America (24%), and Australasia (32%), the message is consistent: suppliers now sit at the center of customer delivery and reputation.
Why Supplier Trust Will Become a Hard Metric
Investors and regulators are beginning to scrutinize supplier assurance and partnership quality with the same rigor once reserved for financial controls and cybersecurity. Banking and telecoms are already seeing this in supervisory reviews tied to operational resilience and third-party risk. As similar oversight expands into manufacturing, healthcare, and consumer sectors, particularly for ESG reporting and forced-labor compliance, the ability to demonstrate transparent, high-trust supplier ecosystems may soon influence access to capital and regulatory confidence. Forward-leaning companies are preparing now, treating supplier trust not as a sentiment but as a measurable asset.