CPO Path #20

CPO Path #20 CW 32 2026

A board briefing may be more useful when it is treated not as a compressed procurement review, but as a judgement aid for non-specialist directors. The relevant distinction is between demonstrating activity and making exposure, management response, and decision requirements legible at enterprise level.

NACD’s 2025 public-company survey found that 64% of directors were confident in management’s handling of supply-chain issues, while only half reported sufficient visibility into key resilience and innovation metrics ([NACD], 2025). McKinsey’s 2024 supply-chain survey points to a related tension: only 30% of respondents considered their boards to have a deep understanding of supply-chain risk, while regular senior-level reporting had fallen from almost half of respondents in 2023 to roughly one quarter in 2024 ([McKinsey & Company], 2024).

Based on this source picture, confidence in management should not automatically be read as confidence in the underlying information architecture. Directors may trust the executive team while still lacking a sufficiently clear view of concentration, substitutability, continuity, and time to impact.

In practice, a board request often arrives late and without an established format. Procurement may respond by shortening an existing review: less detail, fewer projects, a reduced risk table, and perhaps one summary slide.

The resulting deck may be concise without becoming board-legible.

Deloitte’s 2026 audit-committee priorities place critical-vendor exposure, continuity planning, monitoring, escalation, regulatory compliance, and responsible sourcing within the oversight agenda for third-party and supply-chain risk ([Deloitte], 2026). Forvis Mazars and Board Agenda similarly emphasise the board’s role in examining not only supply-chain visibility, but also the quality of management’s governance, controls, and response ([Forvis Mazars and Board Agenda], 2025).

A more practical reading may therefore be that directors are not primarily assessing procurement performance. They are assessing whether management understands the organisation’s external dependencies, whether the current response is proportionate, and whether any residual exposure requires board judgement.

This changes the meaning of familiar metrics.

“Eighty-two per cent of suppliers screened” may say little unless the remaining 18% is connected to revenue, production, regulatory, or strategic exposure. “Twelve high-risk suppliers” remains functional information until directors can see concentration, time to disruption, substitution readiness, and the decision path already in place.

The committee destination may also shape the briefing. Audit committees are likely to focus on controls, compliance, third-party governance, continuity, and escalation discipline. A risk committee may be more concerned with aggregate exposure and risk appetite. The full board may become relevant where the issue affects strategy, capital allocation, customer commitments, or a material trade-off between resilience and economics.

The implication is not that procurement should elevate more issues. It may be more useful to elevate fewer issues in a form that clarifies why they matter at board level.

One evidence-led working model is a six-slide briefing:

1. Exposure
What could interrupt revenue, production, compliance, or strategic delivery?

2. Coverage
What proportion of that exposure is screened, contractually protected, second-sourced, or supported by an approved contingency?

3. Movement
What has materially improved or deteriorated since the previous review?

4. Board judgement
Which risk acceptance, investment, strategic dependency, or policy choice properly requires director attention?

5. Management action
What is management already doing without asking the board to operate the function?

6. Watch number
Which single indicator should remain visible until the next review?

Three metrics may be particularly useful because they connect procurement conditions with enterprise consequence:

The final discipline may be subtraction. Supporting analysis can remain in the appendix. The main deck is likely to be stronger when each slide changes the board’s understanding, confidence, or decision.

A procurement briefing may earn renewed board attention when it makes judgement easier, not when it makes activity more visible.

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NACD. “NACD Report: Economic Uncertainty and Cyber Risks Top Board Priorities.” 2025.
https://www.nacdonline.org/about/newsroom/press-release/press-release/nacd-report-economic-uncertainty-and-cyber-risks-top-board-priorities/

McKinsey & Company. “Supply Chains: Still Vulnerable.” 2024.
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/our-insights/supply-chain-risk-survey-2024

Deloitte. “Audit Committee Priorities in the Year Ahead.” 2026.
https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/services/audit-assurance/blogs/accounting-finance/audit-committee-priorities-in-2026.html

Forvis Mazars and Board Agenda. “Strategic Oversight in Supply Chain Management.” 2025.
https://boardagenda.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/BA_Supply_Chain_Management_v4.pdf

Thank you for reading,

Pascal Hecker | Editor-In-Chief, CPO Path.