In the first piece, I told you the 2020 pledge was real. What I want to show you now is what “losing interest” actually looks like in one specific, recurring piece of work almost nobody outside operations ever hears, or cares, about: the quarterly visit.
I’ll repeat one point from the first article, because it’s worth having on the record. Knut Alicke, the McKinsey partner who has tracked supply chains since the pandemic began, told a reporter at the end of 2024 that the chief supply chain officer has “lost the seat at the table,”[i] as companies swing back toward cost-cutting and inventory reduction. That’s the boardroom version of the fade, and it trickles through the rest of the company.
Let’s move out of the boardroom, and into the supply chain. Showing up with a purchase order doesn’t get you anything by itself. A supplier only has so much capacity, and plenty of other customers are asking for a piece of it. Someone at your company has to convince the supplier your business deserves the allocation more than the next customer. In the end, suppliers support you because they believe in you. And they believe because you make them a partner, not a vendor.
That’s a sales job, even if it doesn’t come with a sales title attached to it. It’s why I have often told anyone who’d listen — customers, colleagues, even suppliers themselves — that the best salesperson in a company isn’t in the sales department. It’s the buyer, in supply chain.
And it’s exactly the kind of work that gets skipped the moment nobody’s forcing the issue. When a crisis hits — a shortage, a plant fire, a port shutdown — allocation becomes urgent overnight, and everyone suddenly remembers how to fight for it.
When things are calm, that same fight quietly turns into a phone call nobody makes, a relationship nobody tends, a supplier who slowly starts giving your allocation to someone who is still showing up.
Back to the quarterly visit. Physically going to your supplier is a powerful way to show them how much you care, how much they mean to you. Going when the house is on fire? Join the crowd; look up higher on the Visitor Logbook, you’ll see your competitors. Going when things are calm? That makes the difference. But don’t be surprised when your travel budget gets slashed during “good times.”
That’s the real shape of the fade. It isn’t a single decision to deprioritize supply chain. It’s the small decisions to not have a conversation, because nothing was on fire that particular week. It’s the “do it on Zoom” instead of getting on a plane.
Coming next: There is one company whose supply chain team never seemed to lose its seat at the table. That’s about to be tested.
[i] “Supply chain wanes in 2025, but resilience remains key trend,” TechTarget/SearchERP, published December 5, 2024.
URL: https://www.techtarget.com/searcherp/feature/Digital-tech-tops-supply-chain-trends-list-for-2024