True excellence in supply chain planning is a rarity. While most companies have invested heavily in some type of advanced planning system (APS) and are beginning to experiment with AI, relatively few have translated those investments into consistent performance gains. This divergence is not due to differences in access to technology. APS platforms and emerging AI capabilities are widely available and increasingly frequently deployed, albeit at high cost and with substantial effort. Instead, performance differences reflect how effectively organizations have embedded the new tools in their decision-making processes.
Against this backdrop, BCG’s inaugural report on the state of supply chain planning offers three critical insights for senior leaders:
- Planning maturity matters for business performance. Survey results and practitioner experience show a strong correlation between how effectively organizations execute their planning processes and how well they perform in areas such as service levels, forecast accuracy, and inventory management. Yet most organizations remain in the middle of the maturity curve. Progress is wide-ranging, but the gap between leaders and laggards is growing.
- APS is the backbone of planning, but value often goes untapped. APS platforms are widely embedded in most large organizations, yet process redesign and operating model changes frequently lag behind system deployment. As a result, many companies that have modern tools in place underutilize their advanced capabilities and fail to see expected benefits. Success requires treating APS as an evolving business infrastructure rather than a one-time technology implementation.
- Although interest in AI is high, fully autonomous planning remains an aspiration. Most value today comes from foundational applications—improving forecasting, exception management, data interpretation, and workflow automation—rather than from lights-out planning. Organizations that attempt to leapfrog through the process of planning maturity by means of AI alone tend to struggle, while those that layer AI deliberately onto stable planning foundations see more durable gains.
Our findings make clear that planning excellence does not emerge from any single technology or initiative. Instead, it arises when organizations align four elements in concert: the decisions that planning is meant to support, the processes and operating model that govern those decisions, the data foundation that enables trust and consistency, and the technologies that amplify speed and insight.
As volatility persists and technologies continue to evolve, organizations that sequence change deliberately and treat planning as a sustained organizational capability, rather than as a collection of tools, will pull ahead.
