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Companies today are being reshaped by multiple challenges, forcing operations leaders to cut costs, drive growth, and build adaptability—all while dealing with increasing complexity across ecosystems, regulations, and technology. In this landscape, outdated operating models too often constrain current performance. Installing a new ERP, customer service model, or manufacturing line may keep the trains running, but those moves alone won’t position businesses for the long term. And that could leave you trailing those who prioritize sustained growth.
COOs are being asked to deliver three outcomes at once—speed, trust, and effectiveness—while operating through disruption, policy shifts, and increasingly elaborate ecosystems. What’s missing is a practical way to prioritize where to focus first.
Breaking through means recognizing that “operations” isn’t one model. How it delivers value differs fundamentally by industry. Product- and asset-intensive businesses compete through supply chains that move materials and goods. Service-intensive businesses compete through service chains that orchestrate people, processes, and digital delivery from front to back office. Each demands its own playbook with its own risk patterns, transformation blockers, and levers for performance.
For more insight on the future of operations, watch for our 2026 Digital Trends in Operations Survey report coming in April
To reinvent operations for the long term, COOs should focus on three realities.
- Supply chains and service chains behave differently. Supply chains optimize physical flows, network design, and asset productivity. Service chains optimize service delivery, workforce capacity, customer experience and regulatory trust. Both are exposed to disruption, but in different ways with distinct resilience requirements and transformation challenges.
- Operations is bigger than supply chains, and reinvention requires end-to-end orchestration. Competitive operations now depend on capabilities that sit beyond traditional supply chain scope: field services, R&D/product development, and the enterprise “control plane”—workforce, risk, governance, compliance, and data/tech integration that enable faster decisions and cleaner accountability.
- Industry context matters—pressures and growth paths aren’t interchangeable. Manufacturing, consumer products, and pharma face different constraints and value drivers than healthcare, banking, and insurance. Both groups aim to reinvent operations, but the sources of complexity, failure modes, and performance upside vary by industry and delivery model.
COOs who redesign operations around these realities can unlock more reliable outcomes, higher productivity, and deeper customer trust. Here’s what to know—and do—so operations becomes a competitive advantage instead of a structural constraint.
Supply chains and service chains demand different playbooks
Operations success hinges on COOs aligning strategy, technology, talent, and governance to the right ecosystem. Ignoring this and using a one-size-fits-all model can limit impact and slow transformation.
Supply chains, by design, require scale, orchestration, and resilience, and value is driven by physical flows, network design, vendors, and inventory. Pain points for COOs include:
- Persistent volatility in demand, supply, and geopolitics undermining planning confidence
- Fragmented visibility across suppliers, tiers, and logistics partners
- Rising input costs and margin pressure with limited pricing flexibility
- Sustainability and regulatory requirements colliding with cost and service targets
- Legacy planning, ERP, and execution systems slowing decision-making
Despite significant technology investments, many companies have limited end-to-end visibility into their supply chains. In our research and experience, only a few operations leaders say their operating model enables rapid reconfiguration in response to disruption. High performers integrate digital, data, and ecosystem partners into core operations.
Service chains require collaboration, experience-led design, and workforce enablement, and value comes through tight integration of all activities—sales, administration, IT, HR and so on. Pain points include:
- Disconnected front, middle, and back offices driving friction, rework, and poor experiences
- Escalating cost-to-serve without corresponding gains in service quality
- Skills gaps limiting scalability
- Regulatory and compliance demands slowing operational change
- Data trapped in disconnected systems, preventing real-time insight and orchestration
At many companies, operating complexity has increased faster than revenue growth. COOs are often constrained by talent availability and stalled transformation efforts. Leading organizations aim to redesign service chains end-to-end rather than improve individual functions.
Moving from disconnected functions to integrated performance
Across sectors, enterprise operating models are being challenged by expanding networks of technologies and stakeholders—suppliers, partners, regulators, and customers. Legacy, function-centric models at many companies have slowed decision-making and diluted accountability, while aging assets and disconnected systems have curbed productivity gains. COOs are increasingly moving toward digitized, data-driven operations and ecosystem-oriented models that enable faster trade-offs.
Beyond operating models, leaders at companies that move goods through a system should reassess multiple areas that are instrumental in reinventing operations.
| Procurement | Increasing volatility, regulatory scrutiny, and geopolitical risks are reshaping procurement and supplier strategies. | Impact: Traditional cost-focused sourcing approaches are insufficient alone. Action: Rebalance procurement toward resilience, optionality, and supplier collaboration, supported by real-time risk and performance insights. |
| Planning and logistics | Demand variability and disruption are eroding the effectiveness of static planning and logistics networks. | Impact: Fragmented data limits visibility across tiers, lanes, and owners. Action: Invest in dynamic planning, network flexibility, and integrated logistics orchestration, not incremental fixes. |
| Product development | Market shifts and customer expectations are shortening product development life cycles. | Impact: Siloed development and handoffs slow time to market and add rework. Action: Push for tighter integration between product development, supply chains, and commercial teams to better scale innovation. |
| Field service | Field service operations face rising pressure to improve speed, reliability, and cost efficiency amid growing ecosystem intricacy and reliance on third parties. | Impact: Legacy operating models and isolated technology fixes limit flexibility and coordination, hampering long-term performance. Action: Rethink field services as integrated and customer facing, investing in dynamic workforce models, better data and visibility, and tighter alignment between field, supply, and customer service teams. |
| Research and development | Research and development teams are pressured to accelerate innovation while managing cost and policy shifts, with linear models slowing time to market. | Impact: Disconnected R&D and commercialization functions—combined with point solutions—prevent scalable and sustained innovation. Action: Establish more integrated, agile R&D operating models that connect research, product development, and downstream operations, enabling sustained growth. |
In industries that focus on services and processes more than hard goods, areas to reassess include:
| Workforce | Talent shortages and evolving skill needs in the workforce limit operational scalability. | Impact: Traditional roles often don’t align with more unified, digital operations. Action: Reevaluate workforce models, focusing on reskilling, cross-functional capabilities, and human-digital execution. |
| Digital delivery and enablement | With digital delivery and enablement, point solutions and disconnected initiatives are increasing technical debt and fragmentation. | Impact: Tech investments are decoupled from measurable business outcomes. Action: Anchor digital delivery to operating model redesign and sequence roadmaps around resilience and customer impact. |
| Customer service | Customer service expectations for speed and transparency are rising across industries. | Impact: Inconsistency among front, middle, and back offices creates tension and unreliable experiences. Action: Redesign service delivery end-to-end, using data and automation to improve CX and cost-to-serve. |
| Risk and compliance | Regulatory and policy changes are occurring more frequently and influencing risk and compliance. | Impact: Reactive, one-off responses increase cost and operational drag. Action: Embed risk and compliance considerations into core operations, enabling proactive adaptation instead of constant firefighting. |
| Governance | Rising ecosystem complexity and outdated governance structures are exposing unclear accountabilities and fragmented KPIs. | Impact: Slower decisions, with diluted ownership of enterprise outcomes. Action: Clarify decision rights, align incentives to total performance, and facilitate faster trade-offs across risk, investments, service, and growth. |
Different industries, different demands, one mandate to reinvent
As you can see, issues with reassessing and reinventing operations vary based on type of business.
Turn operational pressure into competitive advantage
Regardless of industry, many factors are forcing companies to reexamine their operations, presenting new opportunities for increased efficiency and growth. At a mid-size bank, segmented and outdated platforms may slow digital product launches. An electric utility could be trying to modernize aging grid assets while integrating renewables. A major apparel brand may face unpredictable demand and long lead times, with disconnected supply teams driving markdowns. Fragmented clinical and billing systems at a regional health system could cause delays and uneven capacity.
In each case, understanding and addressing internal functions and external forces that impact operations is critical. In the months ahead, we’ll dig deeper into the challenges and opportunities by function and industry. With disruption accelerating and margins tightening, operations can no longer be managed incrementally. Leaders who act now will define the next era of effective operations.
Find out more about our Operations Transformation services
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