{{item.videoDuration}}
{{item.title}}
{{item.videoDuration}}
What’s important to the COO in 2026
Executive insights
Five topics shaping the future of operations
EB new styles XF - New Brand
COOs lead with agility and reinvention to help drive growth
In a world being reshaped by policy shifts, tariff volatility, and AI‑fueled disruption, COOs are capturing the moment to reimagine what’s possible. Leaders in manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, technology, and other industries are combining forward-looking, data‑driven scenario modeling with operational resilience to fuel growth—making strategic moves that go beyond just keeping pace. With AI‑powered insights, cross‑functional clarity, and trust as the connective tissue, you can redesign complex ecosystems, supply chains and service chains, and workforce models. It’s not just about managing disruption. It’s about setting the foundation for smarter, faster operations that can quickly adapt as conditions change.
In the spotlight
Formula 1®: Turning trackside know-how into systems that scale
Formula 1® doesn’t just race at record speed—it moves tons of equipment across 24 events worldwide. For years, instinct and crew experience kept the show running. But with growth came opportunity: to capture what worked and build a race operations backbone for the future.
Through F1’s Future of Race Operations program, PwC—F1’s Official Consulting Partner—helped turn tacit know-how into structure. Our teams went trackside, documenting unwritten prep and using AI to capture processes in real time. The result: progress toward more sustainable digital operations, with six enablement areas guiding the path to scalable race delivery.
{{filterContent.facetedTitle}}
{{contentList.loadingText}}
{{contentList.loadingText}}
“Because PwC embedded themselves with our teams, they understood our business and operations from the inside out—and it showed in the insights they delivered.”
Ian Stone, Director of Transport Logistics and Cargo, Formula 1
Where to focus in 2026
Artificial intelligence
Streamline operations with AI to scale faster
Freeing capacity for innovation starts with one question: What are your teams spending time on? When you embed AI into your operations, you can shift from managing manual tasks to generating insights, adapting in real time, and unlocking new sources of value. From smart factories and low-touch warehouses to predictive logistics and connected supply chains, intelligent systems fuel faster decision-making and flexible delivery models.
This isn’t just about productivity. It’s about reinvention. With a trusted data foundation, AI can reshape planning, sourcing, fulfillment, and service—turning complexity into clarity and speed into scale. That opens the door to broader reach, stronger sustainability, and better margins. And the more intelligence you build in, the more you can scale what matters—resilience, differentiation, and innovation.
Top insights
Artificial intelligence
Responsible AI and third-party risk management: What you need to know
As AI becomes more integral to operations, many organizations may be overlooking how much their vendors, subcontractors, and service providers use AI.
Technology
PwC’s 2025 Digital Trends in Operations Survey
Accelerate the shift from triage to transformation.
Digital oversight and cybersecurity
Data risk is everywhere: 5 steps to manage it
Learn how to stay ahead of data risk and help safeguard your organization.
[57%] of operations and supply chain leaders have integrated AI into selected functions or throughout their organizations
Supply chain
Build agile, responsive supply chains and service chains
The need for greater agility extends beyond physical supply chains. It includes the “service chain,” the interconnected flow of people, processes, and data that help deliver value. In industries such as banking, healthcare, and insurance, agility depends on shared visibility and real-time intelligence across digital platforms. When service and supply chains link procurement, operations, and customer demand, organizations can anticipate disruption and respond to risks quickly.
Redesign your network to align both physical and service delivery models with customer expectations and regulatory shifts. For healthcare providers and payers, that means integrating data and care delivery networks for more coordinated outcomes. In banking, it’s unifying digital operations and customer service. In insurance, it means connecting underwriting, claims, and customer engagement to respond dynamically to market changes. Leading companies build transparency from sourcing to service delivery and make both their physical and digital value chains a competitive advantage.
Top insights
Supply chain
Six forces changing supply chains: Are you prepared?
The global supply chain landscape is shifting rapidly, driven by six powerful forces that will reshape operations, resilience, and profitability.
Consumer markets
Getting products to customers faster with a connected supply chain
A national consumer goods leader transforms its value chain to boost speed, precision, and resilience.
Operations
Formula 1®: Rewiring the future of race operations
From setup to teardown, everything leads to one moment: the green lights. PwC is helping F1 design race operations built for sustainability, resilience, and speed.
Supply chain
Trade positions are taking shape: What’s your next move?
Think beyond the immediate impact to get ahead.
[91%] of operations and supply chain leaders say they’ll significantly change supply chain strategies because of US trade policy changes
Workforce strategy
Equip your workforce and operations for what’s next
Tomorrow’s operating models will be built on seamless human-AI collaboration. Success depends on rethinking how work is designed so people and technology complement one another—unlocking speed, accountability, and sharper decisions across the enterprise. That means increasing digital literacy across your workforce and upskilling talent to use AI as a partner, not a replacement.
By reconfiguring workflows your teams can flex with shifting demand and respond to disruption quickly and efficiently. And by equipping both frontline and remote employees with digital tools, shared data, and collaboration platforms, you can develop a workforce that’s adaptive, engaged, and innovative—ready to generate lasting value and help shape the next wave of growth.
Top insights
Workforce strategy
Workforce Radar: Build the workforce of the future
Learn about the five workforce signals leaders can act on to successfully drive their desired workforce transformation and business outcomes.
Workforce strategy
What AI means for your workforce strategy
Five takeaways from PwC's 2025 AI Jobs Barometer.
Workforce strategy
How a workforce balance sheet approach can help drive transformation
Increase workforce value with data-driven decisions.
[47%] of operations leaders are hiring talent with advanced digital skills to develop a digital-ready workforce
Operations
Align ecosystems to unlock value
Future-ready operations don’t happen in silos. Growth takes deeper collaboration across your entire value chain, from suppliers and advisors to partners and even competitors. When you break down internal barriers and strengthen external ties, you can innovate more quickly, lower costs, and build more resilient networks and shared wins.
Start by mapping your ecosystem—critical services and the parties that deliver them. Take a fresh look at the capabilities of your suppliers, advisors, and teams. Then work across functions to integrate proven processes and solutions in planning, production, distribution, and customer experience. Use what you’ve learned from past disruptions to guide digital investments that build agility now and set you up for the future. The goal? An operations model that flexes with market shifts, responds to regulatory change, and evolves with your customers.
Top insights
Operations and supply chain
The costs of delaying reinvention in operations and supply chains
See how companies can deliver immediate results in their operations while still preparing for an uncertain future.
Strategy and operations
Explore new domains of growth—markets where companies work across sector boundaries to meet fundamental human needs.
Strategy and operations
Why companies should start to reconsider the business case for circularity
How circular business models can help companies spark innovation, reduce operating costs, build brand value, and drive long-term growth.
[41%] of COOs say limited collaboration across operational and supply chain functions is a top-3 barrier to delivering on their operations strategy
Source: PwC Pulse Survey, May 2025
Customer experience
Elevate customer experiences
Reliability is the wow, and delivering consistent service and quality starts with seeing risk before it hits. With the right data and scenario models, you can provide real-time status and recovery options, uncover friction points across the customer journey, and respond more effectively. From fulfillment to post-sale support, analytics can unlock insights to anticipate shifts, manage decisions, and strengthen stakeholder confidence.
Use scenario planning to assess performance under stress across supply chain and service disruptions, policy changes, or spikes in demand. Replace functional performance with outcomes-backed solutions and end-to-end thinking, which can provide better answers to trade-offs. When teams across product, logistics, and service work from a shared view of risk and opportunity, it creates a more adaptive, trusted operation that keeps your business moving forward.
Top insights
Customer experience
PwC’s 2025 Customer Experience Survey
Why companies think they’re winning when customers are walking away.
Customer experience
Why the future of customer experience demands the experience supply chain
You don’t own your customers’ experiences—they do.
Operations
Salesforce reinvents its business technology group with a customer-centric approach
See how the company worked with PwC to embrace a ready-to-scale agile operating model.
[70%] of executives say customer expectations are evolving faster than their company can adapt
Explore executive insights
Identify the key focus areas of your colleagues.
Follow us
