Resilience still matters, but leading organizations are integrating customer needs and efficiency into their supply chains to drive enterprise-wide value.
Profound disruptions in recent years have revealed the inherent fragilities of traditional supply chain models. In response, supply chain leaders have understandably focused on building resilience.
Now, tariff turbulence, even more geopolitical complexities, and an increasingly demanding customer environment are compelling organizations to take a more holistic view of their supply chain strategies. Some of the most forward-looking leaders recognize that resilience is no longer the end goal, but the starting point. They are striving toward the new strategic imperative to create what is called ‘Total Value’ for the organization.
At KPMG we consider that ‘Total Value’ shifts the organizational lens from merely enduring supply chain disruption to actively pursuing enterprise-wide value maximization. In our view, it is not a replacement for supply chain resilience, but a strategic evolution.
Total Value can unite Total Experience (the strategic value that a high performing supply chain can add to the customer) and Total Performance (the strategic value that a high performing supply chain can add to the business) to seamlessly integrate critical business dimensions.
Total Experience is the unification of customer, employee, partner, and digital interactions into one seamless, intelligent ecosystem. It focuses on empowering every touchpoint to help deliver value to0 clients, and is built on five core principles:
Total Performance is about doing the right things faster, smarter, and more sustainably, aligned to high-performing operational outcomes. It is about delivering measurable outcomes across five dimensions:
For one senior executive, at a global building technologies company, a key focus is service transformation. The senior executive says the organization is driving a three-pillar approach to exceptional customer service — which starts with the customer need, then incorporates the commercial aspects, then thirdly the operational aspects.
“It’s that full triangle that has to come together to deliver on the experience – you need the right offerings that align with customer needs, you need the right pricing and a sales team that can articulate that value — along with a sales compensation structure that aligns to that — and you need operations and distribution that supports the promise,” she says. “The key is stepping back and saying, ‘what are the outcomes that customers are looking for, and how do I solve those outcomes?’ Those outcomes start in those three pillars.”
Total Value can be achieved by elevating both the customer experience (Total Experience) and operational performance (Total Performance) across the entire enterprise. The outcome can include sustained growth, enhanced efficiency, and a distinct competitive advantage. Importantly, it builds on the work already done on supply chain resilience in several ways:
While traditional approaches to build supply chain resilience focus on end-to-end visibility, Total Value expands this scope to include customer journeys and satisfaction metrics. It also focuses on streamlining internal processes, enabling consistent and transparent financial transactions and reconciliation, and gaining insight into the entire lifecycle of product and service ecosystems.
Total Value can cultivate a ‘one organization’ view centered on the customer, helping to ensure all functions contribute to delivering customer value. It promotes cross-functional collaboration and integration by aligning sales, marketing, and commercial teams for a unified customer approach; aligning finance and procurement functions by integrating financial planning with sourcing strategies; and connecting strategy and Innovation by linking the long-term vision with agile development and implementation.
Supply chain resilience and Total Value are both data-driven, yet they apply data differently. Resilience focuses on alerts, simulations, product flow optimization, and risk mitigation. Meanwhile, Total Value uses data for the personalization of products, services, and interactions, consistently refining business processes and strategies, and to inform long-term transformation and innovation.
To illustrate the power of Total Value, consider a disruption in a critical supplier network. A resilience-focused approach would identify the issue, model its immediate impact, and find alternative suppliers or logistics routes. In a Total Value approach, the organization would orchestrate a multi-dimensional, integrated response that restores operations, and also strengthens the business across customer, employee, financial, and innovation dimensions.
Key steps in this scenario would include immediate customer communication to provide transparent updates, leveraging technology to empower staff to handle the disruption effectively, and rapidly re-evaluating supplier contracts, payment terms and any risk exposure. Next, through data capture and root cause analysis, the business would seek to understand the disruption’s origin and use this insight for future improvement. This demonstrates how Total Value can help ensure that the organization both recovers from the disruption and emerges better positioned for future growth.
The senior executive gives the example of an organization that placed its accounts receivable department within customer service rather than within finance, as a delayed bill could indicate a delay in delivery that the operations team need to be aware of.
“It could be a signal that there is an experience problem that they need to solve, and they can act faster for the benefit of both the customer and the business,” they say.
Adopting a Total Value mindset can offer significant advantages for all key stakeholders. Suppliers and partners benefit from improved collaboration and greater transparency. The organization gains enhanced efficiency, resilience, and innovation. Employees are empowered through real-time insights, intuitive tools, and streamlined workflows. Customers experience more personalized interactions and proactive issue resolution, while end consumers benefit from greater pricing stability and product availability.
With supply chain disruption ever-present, resilience can be the bedrock of operational stability. However, elevating from a focus on resilience to Total Value enables opportunity, growth, and innovation. This focus on experience, performance, technology, and data means organizations can both enhance the supply chain while unlocking increased value for the business overall.
Let KPMG help you build a better, more predictable future with a purpose-built supply chain. With our extensive industry experience, functional knowledge and technology enablers, we can help you accelerate your supply chain transformation to foster long-term growth and success.
