Data in Supply Chains: Turning Insights into Action

Data in Supply Chains: Turning Insights into Action
January 26, 2026 9 mins

Data in Supply Chains: Turning Insights into Action

Data in Supply Chains: Turning Insights into Action

Organizations have access to more supply chain risk data than ever — yet few use it to its potential. Leaders who turn the wealth of available information into actionable insight set the standard for effective, data-driven supply chain risk management.

Key Takeaways
  1. Understanding the main risks in supply chains — and their consequences — is now essential: 28% of organizations suffered a recent loss from supply chain risk but only 12% quantified their exposure, according to Aon’s 2025 Global Risk Management Survey.
  2. Advanced analytics help cut through the abundance of supply chain data, focusing on the risks that matter most and enabling decisive action.
  3. Organizations can secure long-term supply chain continuity via cross-functional collaboration, continuous supplier assessment and predictive risk intelligence.

Supply chain risk is now central to boardroom discussions worldwide, with 74% of leaders taking more responsibility to manage the function.  

Despite this focus, supply chain risk management remains fragmented. Rapidly evolving threats, overwhelming volumes of information, competing commercial pressures and gaps in insurance leave organizations even more vulnerable. Only 11% of respondents to Aon’s 2025 Global Risk Management Survey evaluated risk financing and transfer solutions for supply chain disruption. 

Supply Chains Stressors

  • 01
    Geopolitical Tensions

    An increasingly complex and protectionist environment has seen some regions introduce compliance requirements and regulations that challenge foreign companies.

  • 02
    Cyber Risks

    Attacks on supply chains made up 29% of reported cyber incidents in 2024, according to Aon’s Global Cyber Risk Report. Digitization creates new, often asymmetric risks that are harder to predict and manage.

  • 03
    Extreme Weather

    Climate events have impacted shipping lanes, halted business activities and caused significant financial losses.

For many large multinationals, supply chain risk is owned by procurement, with oversight from finance, treasury and operations — and often, more limited contributions from risk leaders. “Each stakeholder comes to the table with a different perspective on how to define risk and the measures required to manage it,” explains Richard Waterer, Aon’s Global Risk Consulting Leader. “This presents a very real chance of gaps in understanding, and suboptimal risk and insurance strategies.” 

Gaining a 360-degree view of supply chain exposure requires organizations to break down silos and use data analytics to make informed decisions that balance cost and continuity. Simply identifying risks is not enough: Leaders must act on insights to build long-term resilience. 

Quote icon

Supply chains are like living organisms: When disruption occurs in one area, it sends ripples throughout the system, changing it in ways that can be hard to restore.

Vesa Hakanen
Supply Chain Risk Solutions Leader, Europe, the Middle East and Africa

5 Challenges in Quantifying Supply Chain Risks 

  1. Organizational Silos: Procurement and risk leaders often work separately, leading to fragmented risk visibility and missed opportunities for comprehensive assessment. 
  2. Risk Complexity: An array of interconnected and dynamic risks complicates supply chain risk management. 
  3. Insurance Gaps: Securing sufficient risk transfer to address interconnected and intangible supply chain threats can be a struggle with standard insurance products.  
  4. Key Supplier Identification: Many critical suppliers are “hidden” further down the supply chain, making it hard to determine which ones represent the most significant risks. Supplier spend can dominate risk decisions, even when the vulnerability is with single source suppliers that are essential to supply chain performance. 
  5. Data Overload: The vast amounts of supply chain data generated by new technology today can swamp risk analysis efforts. 
Quote icon

The nature of supply chain risks is so diffuse, so distributed across the business, that organizations need enterprise risk management to align priorities. Otherwise, they're going to measure and manage the problem in different ways across functions, from legal and technology to operations and procurement.

Adam Peckman
Global Cyber Risk Consulting Leader, Head of Risk Consulting & Cyber Solutions, Asia Pacific

Conquer Data Overload with Diagnostic Insight  

The Challenge: Leaders face a deluge of information, with an ever-expanding list of risks and suppliers — especially when analytics bring tier two and three suppliers into view. Navigating this complexity requires clarity and focus. 

Consider This Case Study: An automotive manufacturer with more than 18,000 suppliers partnered with Aon to identify a small but critical supplier of a chemical used in the paint shop. If that supplier had failed, the entire production process would have ground to a halt, with no redundancy or contingency in place. 

The Strategy: Find a partner with supply chain risk analyzing capabilities that combine advanced proprietary analytics, diagnostic tools and deep industry expertise to gain actionable intelligence and risk foresight — including intangible and emerging risks (e.g., reputation, partner solvency, regulatory change). 

“The challenge is to move beyond analysis paralysis, focus on the most impactful risks and turn insights into meaningful action,” says Waterer. “Resilience isn’t achieved by identifying every risk, but by acting decisively on what matters most.” 

80K

At the core of Aon's supply chain solution is the AI-powered Aon Risk Indicator tool, which analyzes more than 80,000 data sources from over 200 countries.

Learn More

Strive for an Enterprise-Wide View of Supply Chain Risk 

The Challenge: Organizational silos can separate critical supply chain risk management functions. Procurement teams excel at choosing the right suppliers, driving value and keeping supply chains moving — often guided by spend and performance. Risk managers aim to uncover, quantify and manage risks that may not be visible in supplier relationships or spend data. 

When these strengths are combined, both functions gain a clearer view of supplier performance and exposure — a powerful foundation that can strengthen resilience across the entire supply chain.  

In the automotive case study, applying a risk lens to the manufacturer’s complex supply chain meant looking beyond supplier relationships with the most significant spend. As a result, leaders uncovered a single point of potential failure that might have otherwise been overlooked. 

What can Supply Chain Risk Managers Learn from Cyber? 

Like supply chains, cyber risks were once seen as niche or department-specific concerns. Now they are recognized as complex, pervasive threats that can disrupt an entire organization.  

The parallels are clear: 

  • Both are characterized by fast-changing threat landscapes, which are initially challenging to quantify, and impacts that extend well beyond traditional boundaries. 
  • Both have required policy product innovation beyond market standards and continue to need specialized, nuanced adjustment.   
  • Organizations moved past seeing cyber security purely as an IT issue — and they now must approach supply chain resilience as a collective responsibility, too. 

The Strategy: Elevate the profile of the risk leader, who can deploy effective risk assessment and quantification tools and techniques, and play a key role in solving supply chain challenges. Beyond quantifying risk, they can apply a risk-based approach to identifying critical suppliers and make recommendations for improvement across the chain.  

Unlock Risk Transfer Solutions for Tomorrow’s Supply Chains 

The Challenge: Traditional products for supply chain risk can exclude non-physical or intangible risks, provide limited coverage for unnamed or lower-tier suppliers and be highly sub-limited in scope.  

Many insurers are hesitant to extend coverage for emerging risks or broaden terms due to limited historical data and concerns about aggregation — today, a supply chain disruption in a global hub could trigger thousands of claims. 

The growing risk of supplier solvency is also hard to manage through traditional insurance products. If a key partner becomes insolvent or bankrupt, all businesses that rely on them will experience supply chain disruptions, production delays and reputational harm. 

46.7%

While insurance uptake for supply chain disruptions is rising, only about 46.7% of organizations are covered for major supply chain losses (meaning more than half are not).

Source: Business Continuity Institute, 2024 Supply Chain Resilience Report

The Strategy: Flexible, data-driven risk transfer products can address the complex realities of modern supply chains: 

  • Captive insurance covers frequent, smaller losses from global supply chain events, helping reduce volatility of performance.  
  • Parametric insurance enables rapid payouts and financial protection when a specific, pre-defined event threatens supply chains, typically associated with a weather-related event. 
  • Credit insurance helps manage solvency risk by providing protection against financial loss if a supplier becomes insolvent.  
  • Prepayment (or pre-shipment) coverage manages the risk of a supplier failing to deliver the goods or services after payment. With this solution, organizations can trade with greater confidence, extend credit to new partners and protect cash flows from unexpected defaults in the supply chain.  

+4%

Businesses worldwide should prepare for elevated insolvency risks as economic expansion slows: Aon forecasts the rise in global insolvencies to reach +4% in 2026.

Source: Aon’s H2 2025 Credit Solutions Market Insights Report

Learn More

Your 3-Step Playbook for Supply Chain Resilience 

Companies can pull several levers to reduce the likelihood of a supply chain failure — but all functions need to be on board. Aligning on the “single point of truth” can remove uncertainty and support a strong business case for proactive measures, including: 

  1. Scenario Analysis and Stress Testing: Explore “what if” scenarios to assess your supply chain's true tolerance for risk and the possible consequences of an interruption. Based on findings, consider securing additional insurance coverage, restructuring supply chains or implementing stronger mitigation strategies. 
  2. Continuous Supplier Risk Assessment: Regularly assess the risk profiles of suppliers with advanced analytics to preempt potential issues before they escalate. 
  3. Supply Chain Risk Management: Implement inventory management and stockpiling by holding higher levels of inventory or critical components to buffer against unexpected supply chain disruptions. Use two or more suppliers for a critical component or product to ensure resilience during a disruption in one node of the supply chain. 
From Risk Protection to Risk Foresight 

Leaders must move from reacting to actively anticipating supply chain disruption. The winning strategy is forward-looking, collaborative and analytics-driven — guided by a partner who can identify the exposures that matter most. 

“Supply chain risks today are highly interconnected, requiring a coordinated, enterprise-wide risk management approach that unites functions,” says Adam Peckman, Aon’s Global Cyber Risk Consulting Leader and Head of Risk Consulting & Cyber Solutions in Asia Pacific. 

Establishing a 360-degree view of supply chains empowers companies to achieve strong risk foresight, improve their resilience and gain a competitive advantage in a world marked by constant change.

How prepared is your organization to thrive in the new era of supply chain risk? Connect with Aon to get a clear picture backed by predictive risk intelligence. 

 

Aon’s Thought Leaders
  • Joe Galusha
    Chair, Global Risk Consulting
  • Vesa Hakanen
    Supply Chain Risk Solutions Leader, Europe, the Middle East and Africa
  • Oliver Henderson
    Chief Broking Officer, Credit Solutions
  • Adam Peckman
    Global Cyber Risk Consulting Leader, Head of Risk Consulting & Cyber Solutions, Asia Pacific
  • Richard Waterer
    Global Risk Consulting Leader

General Disclaimer

This document is not intended to address any specific situation or to provide legal, regulatory, financial, or other advice. While care has been taken in the production of this document, Aon does not warrant, represent or guarantee the accuracy, adequacy, completeness or fitness for any purpose of the document or any part of it and can accept no liability for any loss incurred in any way by any person who may rely on it. Any recipient shall be responsible for the use to which it puts this document. This document has been compiled using information available to us up to its date of publication and is subject to any qualifications made in the document.

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