The world has become a more uncertain place. We all feel it.
But in supply chain, trade, tariffs, and economic uncertainty make it extra challenging to maintain oversight of margins.
Therefore, leading supply chain media predict an increase in cost optimization in 2026.
It's a natural reaction. Fluctuating prices and rising costs force companies to prioritize cost optimization and flexibility.
But the most successful companies aren't the ones that cut the most. They're the ones that understand their supply chain best.
That's why cost optimization has moved right to the top of the CEO agenda.
Yes, but not in the way many companies still do it.
The challenge is that many companies still try to optimize costs one function at a time.
For example, Dustin Burke, co-leader of manufacturing and supply chain at Boston Consulting Group, predicts that many companies will change and fine-tune where in the world they produce and ship goods from, so their factories are better utilized.
But without data-based insight into your entire supply chain, how do you know which suppliers to deselect? How do you know which products and customers should be prioritized, and what impact this prioritization will have on your delivery capability?
Risks are clear when optimizing in isolation:
Each decision makes sense locally.
But collectively, they often create new costs elsewhere in the supply chain.
In a complex and global supply chain, costs are a result of the connection between decisions - not a singular decision.
When each function is optimized based on its own KPI's, costs are simply moved around the organization.
What is saved in one place is paid for in another.
Therefore, these types of decisions cannot be made in isolation.
Because when production or distribution structure changes, it affects more than costs. It affects factors such as delivery capability, risk, flexibility, and customer experience.
The same applies to transportation, which is expected to be another focus for companies in 2026:
When rates fluctuate and companies more frequently renegotiate their transportation agreements, transportation becomes not just a purchasing discipline, but a strategic decision with direct consequences for inventory, service level, and tied-up capital.
It's a company concern.
The challenge is that many organizations are still structured to optimize locally despite the high complexity they find themselves in both internally and externally.
When no one has the full overview of the consequences across functions, what we call a wicked problem arises:
A problem that cannot be solved in one department because the root cause lies in the interplay between decisions. And when cost decisions are made without a common decision-making foundation, the complexity, along with the costs, is simply moved around the organization.
You can download our guide to complexity management here.
In 2026, this approach doesn't just become ineffective.
It becomes a huge risk.
If meaningful cost optimization depends on the connection between decisions, the solution is not more KPIs or isolated analysis.
The solution is end-to-end insight.
When companies understand the connection between customers, products, and suppliers, it becomes possible to see where costs actually arise and where they can be reduced without creating new problems.
End-to-end insight makes it possible to:
This is where cost optimization becomes strategic - not reactive.
Very likely, companies will enhance efforts of cost optimization this year.
The difference will be how you do it.
Will you continue to optimize function by function and experience that savings are quickly eaten up by new problems? Or will you work end-to-end and use insight to manage growth, complexity and costs coherently?
One thing we know for certain:
In an increasingly more complex supply chain, the ability to understand and act on connections becomes the real competitive advantage.
See how Inact Now gives you the necessary overview to optimize costs without losing control.