• AI visibility

Guide · AI search

How does a supply chain consultancy get on the shortlist when executives research with AI?

By being easy to name and easy to verify in the sources AI assistants search: rankings, trade press, client results and clear practice pages. Supply chain leaders are short of in-house expertise and are under pressure on tariffs, networks and AI, so they are looking for outside help. Much of the early research that decides who gets an RFP now runs through AI tools, and a firm that is absent there can be absent from the bid list.

By Underneath Team Guide Updated

The short version

  1. Demand for outside help is real: in a Gartner survey (opens in a new tab) of 140 senior supply chain leaders, 50% said they have limited internal expertise or talent to implement and manage AI, and 56% called integrating AI with legacy systems a major challenge.
  2. Big network decisions are hard to land: 72% of supply chain leaders in another Gartner survey (opens in a new tab) had to revisit final approvals for network decisions at least once, which is exactly the kind of work consultancies sell.
  3. Spending is moving faster than confidence: AI now takes 67% of supply chain digital investment, yet 55% of supply chain chiefs are unclear about the returns, Gartner found (opens in a new tab).
  4. Talent is the top internal problem: in the MHI and Deloitte survey (opens in a new tab) of more than 700 supply chain leaders, 52% struggled with hiring and retaining workers and 45% with a general talent shortage.
  5. The clients are large: a trade consultant told CNN (opens in a new tab) his importer and exporter clients do $200 million to $2 billion in annual sales, and Gartner’s supply chain surveys cover companies with at least $250 million in revenue.

Who hires supply chain consultants and managed service providers, and what is a client worth?

Supply chain chiefs at large companies hire them for projects that often turn into retainers.

The buyer is senior and the company is sizable. Gartner’s recent supply chain surveys sampled leaders from organizations with annual revenue of $250 million or more. Source, a research firm that studies how clients buy consulting, surveyed 700 senior executives, directors and senior managers for its “Perceptions of Consulting in the US in 2024” study, and according to KPMG’s release on it (opens in a new tab), 90 percent of them worked in organizations generating over $500 million in revenue.

The commercial model is project work that tends to extend. Dan Gardner of Trade Facilitators, a Los Angeles consultancy in supply chain, logistics and trade compliance, told CNN that he charges either a monthly retainer or sets up projects with specific deliverables for six months to a year, and that many of them end up extending. That is the shape of value in this industry: a first project, then extensions, then often an ongoing managed service for procurement, planning or logistics.

Some firms are building the managed and platform side on purpose. The Hackett Group (opens in a new tab), a consulting and benchmarking firm known for procurement and operations work, reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $69.3 million and cited recent platform-led wins exceeding $30 million as it shifts toward AI-enabled transformation services. One won relationship can be worth years of revenue, which is why a single missed shortlist is expensive.

Why are supply chain leaders looking for outside help now?

Because tariffs, AI and network redesign have arrived together, and most teams lack the people to handle all three.

The Gartner and MHI data above describe a talent gap. The tariff wave added urgency. In the same CNN report, Joseph Esteves, CEO of Maine Pointe, a supply chain and operations consultancy that is part of SGS, said many new clients wanted to avoid repeating pandemic-era inventory mistakes, and he expected “some very great consulting years.” John Piatek, vice president of consulting at GEP, said contingency planning was “absolutely the hot topic.”

AI raises the stakes further. The MHI report found only 28% of supply chain leaders use AI today, but 82% expect to use it within five years. And Gartner’s finding that 72% of leaders revisited network approvals, more than half of them three or more times, shows how often big decisions stall without a clear business case. Each of those problems starts with a search for someone who has solved it before.

Where do AI assistants enter the choice of a consultancy?

At the market-research and longlist stage, before any firm is contacted. No public study isolates supply chain buyers here, so we rely on broader B2B evidence.

The best evidence comes from buyers who run formal vendor selections. In a survey of 350 business buyers at organizations that issue at least 10 RFPs a year, conducted for the response-software company Responsive and reported by Digital Commerce 360 (opens in a new tab), 90% said they research before first contact. About one-third named generative AI chatbots, alongside web search and peer recommendations, as primary ways to find new vendors, and buyers used AI most in market research, drafting vendor questionnaires and evaluating shortlists. Two-thirds said they now use generative AI tools as much as or more than traditional search engines, and many companies require buyers to verify what AI tools tell them. That describes the early stage of a consulting RFP closely: AI helps decide which firms are worth calling, and buyers then check.

What do buyers of supply chain consulting ask AI assistants?

They ask problem-first questions, then check named firms. The questions below are our own examples of what a buyer might type, not logged queries.

  • “Which consultancies help mid-size importers redesign sourcing to reduce tariff exposure?”
  • “Who does supply chain network design for food and beverage distributors in the US?”
  • “Should we outsource procurement operations to a managed services provider or build in-house?”
  • “Best partners to implement sales and operations planning at a $1 billion manufacturer.”
  • “Alternatives to Maine Pointe for inventory reduction projects.”
  • “How long does a network design study take, and how are consultants usually paid?”

Two patterns matter. First, these questions name a problem and an industry, not a firm, so the answer depends on which firms are clearly tied to that problem in public sources. Second, the comparison and pricing questions come later, when a buyer already has names. A firm can be strong in the second set and invisible in the first, which is where the longlist forms. Our guide to how AI answers feed pipeline covers this split in more detail.

How does AI visibility become consulting revenue?

Through the bid list. An AI answer adds a firm to the longlist, the longlist decides RFP invitations, and a won proposal opens multi-year work.

The path in this industry looks like this:

  1. A supply chain leader asks an assistant who handles a problem, such as tariff-driven sourcing redesign.
  2. The answer names several firms and cites a few sources. The leader checks those firms’ sites and coverage.
  3. The firms that hold up are invited to an RFI or RFP.
  4. Proposals and presentations decide the winner.
  5. The first project leads to extensions, implementation and sometimes managed services.

AI visibility only touches steps one to three, but those steps decide who competes at all. The Responsive survey shows why that matters: 61% of buyers said they start with a preferred vendor in mind, though half said they are open to switching, and buyers ranked industry expertise as the top factor in the final decision, ahead of pricing and product fit. For a consultancy, that means the proof of sector expertise needs to be visible before the RFP, so the firm is invited, and inside the proposal, so it wins.

What decides whether an AI assistant names a consultancy?

Platforms document little; studies point to named authorities and repeated independent evidence. We separate the two below.

What the platforms document:

  • Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode: a page must be indexed and eligible to appear with a snippet. It also says both features may use “query fan-out,” issuing multiple related searches (Google Search Central (opens in a new tab)).
  • OpenAI says ChatGPT search sometimes partners with other search providers and typically rewrites a user’s question into one or more targeted queries (OpenAI Help Center (opens in a new tab)).

What studies observe:

  • In our study of the hidden searches assistants run, ChatGPT ran a search aimed at a named publication, ranking or award in 43.8% of its answers. When a search named a source, the answer cited it 44.0% of the time, against 8.1% when it was not named. The two rise together, but that alone does not show the named source caused the citation.

What we infer for consultancies: rankings and perception studies of the kind Source publishes, analyst coverage, quotes in trade and business press, and published client results are the sources an assistant is likely to look for when asked who is good at supply chain work. A reasonable expectation is that a firm with a sharp, repeated association (“tariff sourcing for consumer goods importers”) will be named for that question more often than a firm that claims every capability. Our guide to building authority for AI search explains the third-party side.

What does it cost a consultancy to be missing from AI answers?

The cost is not being invited, and no one can measure it directly yet.

There is no public figure for consulting work lost to AI answers, and we will not invent one. The logic rests on the evidence above. Most buyers research before first contact, many enter a selection with a preferred firm in mind, and buyers lean on AI hardest when building and judging shortlists. A firm that is absent at that stage does not lose a pitch; it never pitches. Because one won client can mean a project, extensions and a managed service, the value of each missing invitation is high even if the number of such invitations is unknown.

There is a second cost: wrong facts. If AI answers describe a firm’s practice areas, industries or ownership incorrectly, buyers may rule it out before checking. Our guide on fixing wrong brand information in AI answers covers that problem.

How does generative engine optimization work for a supply chain consultancy?

It makes the firm’s expertise easy for AI systems to find, connect and confirm across independent sources. It does not guarantee being named.

The work, in the order we would do it:

  1. Entity clarity. One consistent description of the firm: practice areas (network design, sourcing and tariffs, planning, procurement managed services), industries served, regions and ownership. Directories such as Consultancy.org list supply chain firms, and those listings should match the site.
  2. Practice pages that answer buyer questions. Each service page should state the problem, typical client size, how engagements are scoped and paid (retainer, fixed project, managed service) and what clients got. Pricing questions are common; a firm can explain its model without publishing rates.
  3. Proof others can cite. Client results with numbers, approved by the client, published as open pages rather than gated PDFs.
  4. Named-authority coverage. Perception studies, analyst reports, awards and trade press such as DC Velocity or Supply Chain 24/7. Expert commentary on tariffs or network turbulence is how firms like GEP and Maine Pointe appeared in CNN’s reporting.
  5. People as experts. Partner bios with credentials and bylined analysis, because buyers hire people.
  6. Measurement across assistants. Track a fixed set of buyer questions in ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Perplexity and Copilot, and record which firms are named and which sources are cited. Our article on comparison pages for B2B citations covers one content type in this mix.

Supply chain software vendors face a related but different problem, covered in our guide on getting supply chain software onto the RFP longlist. Services firms sell people and outcomes, so proof of results and named experts carry more weight than feature lists.

Which questions can’t the current evidence settle?

Several, and a consultancy should plan with them in mind.

  • How many supply chain consulting RFPs begin with an AI assistant. The Responsive figures cover B2B buyers broadly.
  • Whether consulting rankings or perception studies directly raise the chance of being named. Our study shows named sources are cited more often, not that rankings cause recommendations.
  • How stable answers are. AI answers vary between runs and between assistants, so one check proves little.
  • How much of a won engagement to credit to AI visibility. Most deals involve referrals, events and existing relationships as well.

Where should a supply chain consultancy start?

Check what AI assistants say about your practice areas today. Then fix the gaps that keep you off bid lists.

Pick the three problems you most want to be hired for, such as tariff-driven sourcing, network redesign or managed procurement. Ask the main assistants the questions a chief supply chain officer would ask about each, record which firms are named and what sources are cited, and compare that with your own coverage and case results. If you want help, ask us where your firm stands in AI answers focused on the questions that lead to RFP invitations in your sectors. Our generative engine optimization service page covers the longer work, such as practice pages, citable client results and expert coverage that ties your firm to its problems.

Frequently asked questions

Do supply chain executives use AI to find consultants?

No survey isolates them. Among B2B buyers who run RFPs, about one-third named AI chatbots as a primary way to find new vendors.

Is GEO different for a consultancy than for a software vendor?

Yes. A consultancy sells expertise, so named experts, client results and third-party rankings matter more than product pages and feature comparisons.

Should we publish our consulting rates?

Not necessarily. Explain how engagements are scoped and paid, such as retainers or six-to-twelve-month projects, so assistants can answer cost questions accurately.

Can a boutique firm be named next to the big consultancies?

It can, for narrow questions where it is clearly tied to a problem or sector. Broad questions favor firms with more coverage.

How long before GEO work affects our pipeline?

Expect months. Coverage and cited results take time to build, and consulting RFP cycles are long.

Sources

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