Retailers are facing pressure to make larger and faster supply chain decisions amid persistent volatility, yet many continue to rely on fragmented data and disconnected planning processes. New Kallikor research suggests the resulting delays and execution failures are creating hidden costs across sourcing, inventory and logistics operations.
Strategic Choices Without End-to-end Line of Sight
Kallikor’s ‘Deciding in the Dark’ report, focused on major retailers and consumer-facing supply chains, highlights a widening gap between the scale of decisions being demanded and the tools used to make them. Nearly nine in ten executives expect to push through at least one step-change decision in the coming year, yet more than four in five of those big moves encounter serious delivery issues.
The study indicates that senior teams are frequently forced into a false choice between a simplified strategic view of the network and a granular operational picture that does not capture enterprise-wide consequences. Around 63.5% of respondents say they cannot practically evaluate decisions both end-to-end and in day-to-day reality. That blind spot shows up in downstream performance: 92% report unintended trade-offs surfacing elsewhere in the system after a major decision, such as unexpected service impacts, cost leakage or inventory distortion.
For procurement and supply management functions, this inability to test strategic moves against operational constraints undermines contract design, sourcing models and supplier negotiations. Where organisations cannot see how a footprint change, a new allocation policy or an automation investment will affect working capital, lead times and service, they default to conservative contracting or one-off cost events. Industry filings across retail and consumer sectors already show margin pressure where network redesign has outpaced the ability to orchestrate suppliers and logistics partners coherently.
Kallikor’s chief executive Jonathan Barrett argues that leadership capability is not the core problem; rather, the decision environment is misaligned with current volatility. Fewer than one in five major decisions land as originally intended, with many being reworked, scaled back or reversed. That level of rework carries hard procurement costs in the form of aborted sourcing events, renegotiated logistics contracts and stranded inventory, even before lost demand and brand damage are factored in.
Slow Decision Economics and Rising Personal Risk
The report also exposes the time cost of current decision routines. Leaders describe decision cycles that can stretch up to 18 months from initial framing to execution. Roughly three-quarters admit that this drag directly reduces their appetite to pursue bold change. In that window, commodity prices, freight markets and regulatory conditions can move substantially, leaving carefully modelled business cases misaligned with reality.
From a procurement economics standpoint, elongated cycles compound exposure to price volatility and capacity risk. Without agile mechanisms to adjust indexation clauses, allocation rules or volume commitments, retailers face a greater risk of buying at the wrong point in the curve or missing access to scarce capacity. Recent trade data on freight and key consumer inputs such as packaging and electronics components show continued volatility, reinforcing the downside of decisions that arrive late and rigid.
A striking feature of Kallikor’s findings is the prominence of personal and reputational risk in senior thinking. While 90% of surveyed leaders voice concern about reputational exposure linked to large decisions, 60% explicitly rank personal or reputational risk itself among the leading barriers to moving ahead. In practice, that can drive risk-averse structures: extra approval layers, defensive documentation and an insistence on consensus that dilutes category strategies.
For procurement, this has two concrete effects. First, it encourages incrementalism in supplier strategy, favouring small price events over deeper redesign of specifications, network partners or contract mechanisms. Second, it shifts leverage in favour of suppliers that can move faster than their customers, particularly in constrained categories where capacity and allocation rules determine who is served first. Suppliers able to offer credible data, scenario support and performance guarantees gain bargaining power when buyers are internally paralysed.
Decision Speed Is Becoming a Competitive Variable
Retail supply chains have invested heavily in forecasting, planning and execution technologies, yet many strategic decisions still move through lengthy approval processes and disconnected analyses. In fast-changing markets, the value of a decision can deteriorate while organizations are still evaluating it. The ability to assess trade-offs quickly, align stakeholders and act before conditions change is becoming increasingly important as supply chains face shorter planning windows and more frequent disruption.