Why Strategic Supply Chains Underperform – And What You Can Do About It

Most supply chains aren’t broken – they’re misaligned. Despite process improvements and KPIs, many strategic relationships still suffer from missed targets, escalating costs, and wasted effort. The root cause? A failure to understand and manage what truly matters to each party.

The Strategic Relationship Curve reveals a predictable pattern of underperformance driven by misalignment – of interests, expectations, and context. As complexity increases across suppliers, tiers, and partners, so does the risk of breakdown.

The Strategic Relationship Curve

Success today isn’t about tighter control – it’s about deeper alignment. That means continuously surfacing, measuring, and acting on what each party values most.

This isn’t a soft skill – it’s a strategic shift. One that transforms supply chains from transactional networks into high-performance ecosystems.

The curve makes it visible. Value management makes it actionable.

Alignment, Resilience and Coherence (ARC) are the measures to harness complexity.

Supply chain success hinges on a shared foundation — common goals, trust, and clarity — that leaders instinctively grasp yet rarely have the opportunity to measure. 

In a world awash with transactional data, these intangibles slip through the cracks, breeding waste and risk.

Quantify them, and you empower decisive, impactful action for resilient outcomes, ignore them and you’ll experience one or more of these situations:

  • The foundational “why” of the relationship is vague, assumed, or no longer current.
  • Different assumptions about the world, each other, or what “good” looks like.
  • Emotional, interpersonal, or cultural disconnects erode collaboration.
  • Information doesn’t flow freely or meaningfully across boundaries.
  • Formal structures and governance are unclear, misaligned, or both.
  • Rewarding behaviors that don’t benefit (or harm) the relationship.

Yet misalignment often goes unrecognized as the root cause of serious problems — until it’s too late to act.

🚀 Get Started: Test Your Alignment with this Free Diagnostic

Quickly gauge your alignment

The Supply Chain Alignment Diagnostic is a crucial step on the journey:

  • Invite your team – Include yourself and up to 6 others
  • Gather and capture perspectives – Engage people by evaluating some key things that matter
  • Get your custom report – Responses are anonymized and compiled into an accessible report
  • See your alignment (and misalignment) – Identify group agreement, divergence, and blind spots
  • Discover your Strengths & Weaknesses – Share best practice and get support where needed
  • Get guidance on using this insight – Improve collaboration and decision-making

This powerful, easy-to-use diagnostic isn’t a survey — it’s a clear, structured assessment to quickly pinpoint your alignment and performance strengths, areas for improvement, and which actions will deliver the greatest impact.

🚀 Get Started: Test Your Alignment with this Free Diagnostic
Diagnostic Content

Invite your team to engage with a diagnostic which helps them easily evaluate these supply chain matters:

  • Shared Vision
  • Role Clarity
  • Strategic Alignment
  • Success Metrics
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration
  • Information Flow
  • Constructive Conflict
  • Joint Problem-Solving
  • Process Standardization
  • Inventory & Cost Focus
  • Continuous Improvement
  • Technology Integration
  • Risk Awareness
  • Contingency Planning
  • Responsiveness to Disruption
  • Supplier & Partner Adaptability
  • Supplier Relationships
  • Customer Focus
  • Contract vs Collaboration
  • Long-Term Development

Your various perspectives are then gathered and reported back to you – uncovering misalignment and helping you align

ARC Value Management

Here are some examples of how the ARC Value Management Platform generates Diagnostic Solutions in Action:

Evaluate and select partners based on strategic alignment, cultural fit, and long-term value.

  • Strategic Partnering
    Prioritizes partners aligned with organizational strategy
  • Risk Reduction
    Incorporates criteria like financial stability, operational capabilities, and reputational risk
  • Robust Decision-Making
    Uses multidimensional fit analysis (strategic, operational, chemistry)
  • Sustainable Alliances
    Focuses on learning capabilities and cultural compatibility

Define, articulate, and communicate clear, measurable strategic goals and outcomes for each alliance.

  • Shared Purpose
    Establishes quantifiable strategic objectives, fostering mutual commitment
  • Value Co-creation
    Clarifies what matters to all concerned to drive strategic outcomes
  • Improved Communication
    Facilitates open, focused goal and information-sharing
  • Strategic Integration
    Aligns objectives with broader strategic intentions.

Dynamically track and assess the health, status, and performance of strategic alliances using metrics beyond revenue, providing data-driven insights for proactive management.

  • Proactive Insights
    Tracks strategic, operational, and relationship health, enabling early identification of issues or opportunities
  • Timely Interventions
    Supports adjustments to address misalignments or underperformance, improving outcomes
  • Resource Optimization
    Highlights high-value partnerships, guiding focus and investment across the portfolio
  • Accountability
    Uses scorecards and diagnostics to measure performance against strategic goals, ensuring alignment

Bring together Diagnostic results for individual strategic relationships, enabling value-led prioritization, resource allocation, and strategic analysis.

  • Resource Prioritization
    Focuses resources on high-value partnerships, optimizing limited capacity
  • Portfolio Value
    Aligns alliances with corporate strategy, maximizing collective impact and return
  • Systemic Insights
    Identifies common challenges or opportunities across partnerships, improving processes
  • Scalable Oversight
    Manages growing portfolios with tools to reduce complexity and enhance strategic control

Consolidate relationship information, knowledge, intelligence, expertise and experience – best practice available in a structured, shared resource.

  • Team Empowerment
    Equips professionals with situation-specific resources for relationship execution
  • Standardized Practices
    Promotes consistent processes in relationship management
  • Skill Gap Closure
    Harnessing practical ‘learn as you go’ expertise, with resources organized around activities
  • Sustainable Success
    Continuous persistence and improvement of internal relationship capabilities

A ‘shared space’ to facilitate joint innovation and knowledge-sharing between partners, aligning resources and expertise to develop new solutions or processes.

  • Innovation Accelerator
    Encourages co-creation of novel value-led solutions
  • Enhanced Collaboration
    Aligns partners through the things that matter, strengthening relationships and trust
  • Complexity Harnessing
    Provides complexity-aware generative constraints to promote People-Centred engagement
  • Value Amplification
    Creates long-term synergies, generating new value-inspired revenue streams or efficiencies

Identify, assess, monitor, and mitigate risk and uncertainty affecting strategic relationships.

  • Proactive Risk Mitigation
    Puts attention on areas of risk and uncertainty
  • Partnership Stability
    Harnesses complexity manifesting as PESTLE uncertainties
  • Protected Interests
    Introduces the intangibles that complement standard contract and risk management
  • Informed Strategies
    Enables holistic risk and uncertainty evaluation to secure strategic partnering decisions

Utilize value-led parameters, ideally framed at the outset of the relationship, for evidence-based, dispassionate management of relationship terminations or transitions.

  • Value Preservation
    Facilitates orderly exits with clear processes for knowledge transfer and asset allocation
  • Risk Minimization
    Reduces legal, financial, or reputational risks during terminations through structured agreements
  • Relationship Continuity
    Maintains positive exits, preserving opportunities for future partnerships
  • Lifecycle Completion
    Addresses a critical phase, ensuring strategic coherence throughout the lifecycle

Diagnose Issues

spot potential issues before they turn in to serious problems

Gauge Alignment

identify where there is and isn’t convergence of opinion

Share Strengths

capture and share best practice to improve outcomes and motivation

Diagnostics Trusted by Supply Chain Leaders

  • “It helped us prioritize where to take action by identifying elements of partnering best practices that need the most attention”
    Leona Kral
    Alliance Manager, Mobile Computing Partnerships
    Verizon
  • “It served as a valuable catalyst for alliance management groups across AstraZeneca and Medimmune to convene and discuss how we partner more broadly across the enterprise.”
    Steve Twait
    VP Alliance & Integration Management
    AstraZeneca
  • “To understand reality, we needed to understand the perceptions first. It allowed us to capture perceptions efficiently so we could begin to investigate reality.”
    Bernie Hannon
    Senior Director, Strategic Alliances
    Citrix

How to set up and run your diagnostic

You will be asked:

This is needed in order to:

  • identify you as the central point of contact
  • give you access to your response and the compiled report once all responses are submitted
  • inform participants who has invited them

This will be displayed to participants and in the individual and team reports. It is usually your organization’s name, but it could instead be a specific team, department, location or portfolio name.

We will ask you to enter a name and email address for each person you want to invite to participate.

We need this information so that we can email each participant their unique link to respond – so they can securely access (and save and return to) their response, and so they can access a short report of their individual response after they’ve submitted it.

You’ll also need this information in order to notify those people in advance of the invitation actually being sent.

It’s important for you to notify participants before we send their invitation email, to:

  • Help them understand why you’re running the diagnostic.
  • Ensure they look out for their invitation email and don’t mistake it for spam.
  • Increase participation rates by setting expectations in advance.
  • Encourage them to take the diagnostic seriously and provide insightful comments.

We deliberately build in a delay of at least one working day after you submit this form in order to give you time to notify participants in advance of them receiving their invitation email. Please ensure that you contact participants in advance of them receiving the invitation email, for all the reasons listed above.

Hi,

It would be great if you can join me and a few others in a Supply Chain Alignment Diagnostic.

It should take ~30 minutes to complete – all responses will be anonymous.

You’ll log in securely to evaluate 20 Value Codes across five areas: Shared Goals & Clarity, Collaboration & Communication, Performance & Efficiency, Risk & Adaptability, and Partnership & Trust, selecting one of five evaluation statements for each Value Code.

Your thoughts would mean a lot — please jot them down as comments:

– Point out areas where we can improve.
– Share best practices or tips.
– Add any insights and suggestions for action.

Expect an email from ‘Value Management Team’ (Subject: ‘Your invitation…’).

We have 3 weeks, but quicker responses mean a faster group report.

Any questions or can’t make it? Just let me know.

Thanks so much!

Kind Regards,

Please notify participants before their auto-generated invitation email arrives to:

  • Explain why you’re running this diagnostic.
  • Ensure they recognize the email and avoid spam filters.
  • Boost participation by setting clear expectations.
  • Tap into their experience and wisdom to uncover insights that matter.

We delay sending invites by one business day after setup, giving you time to let them know what to expect.

You can copy and edit the adjacent template using the button below.

The invitation email will include a short ‘personal message’ from you, together with your name and email address, along with standard instructions on how to access the diagnostic.

This is to ensure that participants are clear about who invited them and why.

The message (which you can edit) will look like this:

[Your Name (Your Email Address)] has added the following context for this invitation:
“I’m asking you and a few others to join me in this diagnostic because your insights matter, so please do use the comments field . It takes about 30 minutes and will reveal our alignment, strengths, and any opportunities for improvement. Thanks!”

We’ll show you a preview of the full invitation email during the set up process (before they’re sent).

Start Your Free Alignment Diagnostic Now

🎯 See how aligned your team is

📅 Offer available until April 30, 2025

👥 Identify areas of agreement

🚀 Start Your Free Diagnostic

Use the Access Code you’ve been provided

⚠ Offer expires soon. Secure your assessment today!

Frequently Asked Questions

For Administrators:

That’s fine.

We totally understand that you might not want to sign your colleagues up without being clearer what’s involved and what the diagnostic covers.

Just go ahead with the sign-up, but don’t add any other names and email addresses when prompted: you’ll then be able to look through the diagnostic and decide if it’s for you and your team or not.

Don’t then fill anything in, though, as there’s no way of transferring that data to any team diagnostic you go back to sign up for.

You can complete it individually – see “What if I want to have a look at it before inviting colleagues?” above but the most valuable insights come from doing it as a group, where differences in perspectives help surface hidden issues.

For Participants:

Alignment is a necessary foundation for success.

But it is very difficult to achieve and very difficult to know how far away you are from achieving it.

The Supply Chain Alignment Diagnostic will give you an idea of where things really are, and establish a benchmark which you can return to later, to track change and evaluate the effectiveness of actions taken.

If everything is looking good, and if everyone agrees, then the diagnostic will substantiate this.

More likely, though, you’ll uncover areas of opportunity, where the diagnostic and report will:

  • Provide a constructive outlet to surface concerns regarding some key things that matter, and prepare to reorient around solutions
  • Encourage and support individuals that want to take a lead in understanding and making progress in developing alliancing capability
  • Clarify where to focus, which may include discussing and resolving different perspectives

True alignment doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when teams see their differences, discuss them openly, and take action together.

Absolutely not.

We understand that people often have “survey fatigue”, but beyond some superficial similarities, the purpose, nature and outcomes of a diagnostic are entirely different to a survey:

The Supply Chain Alignment Diagnostic is a structured diagnostic tool for synthesizing, comparing and highlighting differences in perspectives.

It will not only reveal misalignments you wouldn’t otherwise see, but it will clarify them through the specific detail of the focused areas you will be evaluating (Value Codes in the table above).

You’ll fill out a short form to set up the diagnostic and tell us who should be invited to take part.

Everything else (invitations, response reports and collation of responses into reports) is then handled by the automated online diagnostic system – users will just be asked to set a password to keep responses secure (nothing will be shared with any third parties).

Most participants complete it in under 30 minutes, and immediately after submitting their response, they each receive a personalized report that presents back and highlights aspects of what they have said. 

When all participants have submitted responses, a more detailed report is generated that synthesizes and analyzes all the data to identify:

  • Overall trends.
  • Specific areas that seem agreed to be of concern (and areas that seem to be going well).
  • Areas with a diverse spread of opinion, suggesting division or perception gaps to resolve.
  • Patterns amongst what has been surfaced.
  • Frequent terms used, which can be the beginnings of a shared language.
  • Recommended next steps.

Absolutely. Your responses are 100% confidential, and results, not attributed to a named person, are only shared within your participating team.