How to build a resilient supply chain in 2025 – ft. Estée Lauder & Zero100

With supply chain leaders having to respond to an ever-increasing rate of shocks in 2025, traditional approaches to supply chain resilience are no longer enough.

Business leaders are now looking for new methods to manage disruptions and improve decision-making.

To delve deeper into this topic, we brought together experts from the Estée Lauder Co. and Zero100. They discussed how to:

• See tariffs as an impetus to improve visibility and responsiveness in the supply chain
• Align across the business on resilience
• Make the most of new technology to enable rapid decision-making
• Use disruptions as strategic opportunities by shifting from defense to offense

Watch the full webinar on-demand – or read on for our highlights.

1. Use disruptions (like tariffs) as an opportunity for change

One current source of supply chain disruption is, of course, international trade tariffs. In her work helping C-level leaders to transform their global operations, Lauren Acoba, VP of Research, Zero100 has seen the proliferation of tariffs impact organizations in diverse ways.

For some, new tariffs are exposing a lack of visibility and responsiveness in their end-to-end supply chains, while others are successfully using the disruption as an impetus to create needed change. “In some cases, tariffs are serving as a welcome catalyst to companies, and driving the organization to make decisions,” Acoba said. “To localize, change the supplier network, update bills of materials or specifications, and move the organization or enterprise towards strategies that supply chain [leaders] might have been advocating for a while.”

2. Align to create value

Florent Guillet-Caillot, VP of Global Supply Chain Strategy and Transformation, Estée Lauder Co. emphasized that today, a supply chain resilience strategy must not only mitigate risk but also create value for the organization. And that’s only possible when Supply Chain leaders and the wider business are fully aligned.

“Embedding resilience in the design of a supply chain is very important,” said Guillet-Caillot. “[But] it’s not enough. It needs to be done in partnership with the rest of the enterprise.”

When resilience is viewed as part of an enterprise’s broader strategy, the conversation around disruption shifts. Suddenly, Supply Chain leaders are able to ask questions like, “Which parts of our network should we protect at all costs, and where could we accept more risk?”

3. Shift strategy from defense to offense

Guillet-Caillot also explained how, with this enterprise strategy for resilience in place, organizations can change their mindset from defense to offense.

He used the example of a business that knows that its competitors’ supply chains are even more exposed to disruption than its own. In such circumstances, the organization might plan to double down on advertising and promotion, seizing the chance to grow its market share.

“We have to be defensive and react, but many times, we’ll have an opportunity to be much more offensive and turn that into a competitive advantage,” said Guillet-Caillot. “To me, that’s what matters. Basically, winning the marketplace.”

Both Guillet-Caillot and Acoba agreed that to plan and communicate such strategic responses to disruption, data visibility is a must. “So much of this,” said Acoba, “is [about] having your data – understanding your data and the contextual connections between data and disparate parts of your organization.”

4. Make the most of new technologies

Asked about how supply chain management technology is evolving, Acoba pinpointed three recent developments.

First, she noted the growth in embedded and connected solutions that can help organizations not only understand risk but grasp its end-to-end implications for their supply chain operations. Then, she highlighted two key use cases for AI: helping to fill data gaps, and supporting process mapping and decision intelligence, to “identify those weak points in resilience, before the pressure is on them, and address them upfront.”

Guillet-Caillot explained that new supply chain management technology is improving the ingestion of structured and unstructured data, providing Supply Chain leaders with more timely, relevant insights.

“[Technology] is helping us to bring more facts to the discussion, and to really bring more speed to decisions,” said Guillet-Caillot. “In the past, I still remember sitting in discussions which were dragging on for months,” he added. “We simply cannot afford that any longer. Because if you’re talking months, by the time you have a recommendation, it’s already almost obsolete.”

5. Create a resilient workforce

As they get to grips with today’s rate of disruption, Supply Chain leaders need to transform mindsets as well as processes.

“Yes, we’re seeing an increase in companies hiring for dedicated resilience roles,” said Acoba. “But I think about it like sustainability and Scope 3. Ultimately, to operationalize that, you need [...] every single person in the enterprise to be thinking, ‘How do I build resilience?’”

For Guillet-Caillot, creating a more resilient workforce also means exposing leaders to challenges in different parts of the business, and helping them to develop expertise that’s broad as well as deep.