Resilience Leaders See 6.8x More Revenue Growth than Competitors

The Data

1. 1

   The companies in our data set hiring most aggressively for skills related to resilience (“resilience leaders”) saw a 6.8% YoY rise in revenue growth compared to the rest of our data set, who saw a 1% increase.

2. 2

   Resilience leaders also better protected margins (0.5% compared to -3.6%) and were closer to analyst EPS estimates (.48 deviation vs .93).

3. 3

   The top five companies leading on hiring for resilience are ExxonMobil, Dell, LVMH, Unilever, and AP Moller Maersk.

A Core Value for a New Era   

Advances in AI, consequent talent shifts, more dense demand signals, and the increasingly urgent need to meet sustainability goals... it’s safe to say the ever-faster pace of change in supply chain has become normal. Being able to react and adapt, and going beyond that to capitalize on change, requires both agility and resilience. As our Co-Founder and Chief Research Officer Kevin O’Marah wrote earlier this year, resilience is not just a buzzword. It’s a core value for any supply chain in the digital era.   

Our data and research show this isn’t just opinion. On more than one front, we found that resilience leaders – those hiring most aggressively for this value, requiring software skills in resilience technology, and creating specific functions tasked with reducing risk – are outperforming their peers on key financial metrics:  

The top five companies leading the pack on hiring for resilience are ExxonMobil, Dell, LVMH, Unilever, and AP Moller-Maersk. 18% of Exxon’s supply chain job posts mention the term “resilience,” closely followed by Dell (16%) and LVMH (13%). Unilever and AP Moller-Maersk round out the top five (9% and 7%, respectively).  

Resilience in Reality  

Kenvue, a consumer health company and one of our resilience leaders, shows what resilience looks like in practice.  

After experiencing a 5-10x demand spike during Covid, which then reset its baseline demand across select brands post-Covid, Kenvue shifted its strategy. Its new approach included: 

• building excess capacity internally to be able to move and scale production quickly and as close as possible to demand,  
• creating real-time data capabilities through process improvements, and  
• partnering with stakeholders to make sure everyone could respond quickly to market changes.  

Moving focus away from cost-effectiveness and toward resilience, Kenvue’s net sales increased by 3.3% to $15.4 billion in 2023, with organic growth of 5%.  

The Takeaway 

To capitalize on the environment of change and realize the opportunities afforded by digital developments in supply chain, prioritize resilience as a core value. Signal this through deliberate hiring and rethinking ways in which to reduce risk or be ready for disruption. Take inspiration from companies like Kenvue and place resilience and agility at the heart of strategy rather than automatically defaulting to priorities like cost-effectiveness. 

To see a different data cut or to dig deeper into this topic, reach out to our Head of Research Analytics, Cody Stack, at  Cody.Stack@zero100.com 

Methodology  

Zero100’s proprietary data and analytics are a combined effort between our data scientists and research analysts. We provide data-first insights matched with our own research-backed points of view and bring this analysis to life via real-world case examples being led by supply chain practitioners today.    

For this study, we looked at over nine million LinkedIn job posts from 245+ B2B and B2C companies. Our analysis categorizes listings based on mentions of specific digital skills within job titles and descriptions. 

Further Reading  

• The AI Advantage: Roadmaps to Resilience  
• The Signal: Supply Chain 2023: Resilience Was – and Still Is – King 
• Research Report: Regenerative Business Planning: A Quiet Resilience Revolution