Logistics Leaders Increasingly Embracing Strategic Goals: Gartner Survey

With an increasing number of logistics leaders reporting directly to the C-suite, priorities are being elevated to impact customer experience, increase digitalization, and automate physical tasks, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc.

In fact, the broadening in ambition of logistics leaders’ long-term objectives is driven in part by heightened attention and reporting levels to the C-suite, to whom 90% of these leaders report to, including 30% answering to the CEO.

“Logistics leaders are raising the ambition of their objectives, looking beyond solely cost-optimization and aligning with leadership’s goals for sustainable business growth,” says David Gonzalez, VP analyst in Gartner's Supply Chain practice. “The time has come to reframe the future of logistics around customer value, increasing productivity, championing growth and developing the right talent.”

Gartner Inc.

Key takeaways:

·        Improving customer experience through more service offerings was the top-ranked initiative, closely followed by increasing digitalization of processes and offerings, and automation of physical execution.

·        50% of high-performing logistics leaders ranked automating and mechanizing physical handling tasks as being the most important future value-creating activity for logistics functions. For all survey respondents, the byproduct of taking a longer-term and more strategic approach to logistics value and investments is to increase logistics productivity, which is a more sustainable and robust approach to cost optimization.

·        Nearly 70% of leaders agree that future logistics functions will be populated by data analysts and automation engineers. In the next five years, logistics talent must adopt different skillsets benefiting from and complemented by machines.