Case Study — Sept 04, 2025
Global Company Uses Scenarios to Navigate Business Risks
Highlights
THE CLIENT: A global manufacturer
USERS: The corporate strategy team
Market Intelligence sees four themes influencing the global landscape in 2025: economic angst, domestic discontent, elusive alliances and trade troubles.[1] These capture the fragility of global economic growth, the rise of unstable coalitions, the evolving nature of external alliances and the intricacies of trade barriers and tariffs. Strategic adaptability will determine resilience.
Corporate supply chain decision-makers dealt with a rapidly shifting U.S. tariffs landscape during the first six months of 2025. Ongoing geopolitical tensions, disruptions in global supply chains and economic uncertainty are likely to persist, impacting trade and manufacturing.
The corporate strategy team at this global manufacturer is responsible for identifying potential risks the company may face and devising appropriate mitigation plans. Members of the team are frequently asked to prepare presentations for the Board and investor groups under tight deadlines. They were feeling challenged by the numerous and changing risks that need to be assessed and quantified in today's volatile environment. They needed a reputable service they could tap into that would provide ready access to the latest thinking about current risks and how they could unfold going forward.
Pain Points
The corporate strategy team was small and had many responsibilities — from assessing the competition to identifying growth opportunities to establishing longer-term objectives for the overall business and its divisions. While members of the team realized the importance of evaluating risks, they felt this required having an in-depth knowledge of global economic and political conditions and market dynamics. Since this called for a broad perspective and ongoing monitoring, they wanted to find a service that could provide:
- Insights into the latest economic and political situation for the many markets that are important for the company.
- A clear understanding of current and potential risks.
- Realistic scenarios showing how these risks could play out over time and the impact they could have on countries and industries.
- Opportunities to speak with experts as needed to discuss the findings.
- Easy access to reports and the underlying data to use in presentations.
Members of the team were aware that Market Intelligence was a leading provider of global data and economic forecasts and reached out to learn more about the firm's capabilities.
It has become critical for companies to evaluate economic and political risks in today’s complex and dynamic environment to understand potential vulnerabilities and devise appropriate mitigation strategies.
The Solution
Specialists from Market Intelligence discussed the Global Scenario Service that is designed to identify realistic and high-impact scenarios to help clients plan against credible futures — versus just "possible" ones — and then monitor for evolving probabilities of outcomes. They explained that Market Intelligence has an unparalleled breadth and depth of propriety industry data and expertise and combines this with deep knowledge and insight of local dynamics from regional economics teams and a source network. This enables clients to build strategies based on plausible political and economic futures in a way that is transparent and defensible.
The service delivers three scenarios per quarter that include a base case, plus upside and downside paths. They explained that the Global Scenario Service:
|
Draws upon extensive data not available elsewhere in this quantity |
Data includes approximately 250 to 500 variables per country (depending on the country’s national statistics). This covers trade statistics, population, labor, wages, tax rates, balance of payments and much more. |
|
Is driven by a proprietary global model used throughout the S&P family |
The Global Link Model is a powerful macroeconomic simulation engine run by a 20-strong team of modelling experts. It leverages S&P Global’s sector-level expertise and is built as a full-system model with feedback between variables across 7,000+ estimated equations. It covers approximately 92% of global GDP across 68 economies and provides outputs at country, regional and global aggregates. |
|
Includes risks informed by a cadre of experts |
Specialists from the Global Scenario Service meet regularly with S&P Global's country and industry experts to discuss the current situation and emerging issues of concern. Together they determine the risks to evaluate in the next round of scenarios. Specialties of team members include:
|
|
Reflects scenarios that rely on deep political and economic insights |
Detailed and highly plausible scenarios are rooted in a real-world understanding of current events. The Global Scenario Service's team leverages deep political and economic expertise across 150+ internal economists and risk analysts to identify key scenario triggers. They then develop a narrative that shows how the scenarios unfold over a given timeframe.
|
|
Provides access to experts |
Clients can speak to the economists who generate the scenarios, country-specific economists and risk analysts to better understand the assumptions, specific details about the findings and the likelihood of a scenario unfolding. |
|
Offers easy online access to reports and the data underlying the scenarios |
Clients can quickly access reports and data to be briefed on the latest findings and use materials in presentations to the Board and investor group. |
Key Benefits
Members of the corporate strategy team were impressed with Market Intelligence's bench strength and the many areas of expertise that come together to assess potential future outcomes. They also felt confident with the Global Link Model knowing that it is used throughout S&P Global and in regulatory exercises where the results are heavily vetted by a model validation team. They subscribed to the Global Scenario Service and are now benefiting from having:
- A quantification of global risks to guide their business decisions, including market-entry strategies, where to expand investments and how best to diversify the supply chain.
- Online reports and data to be prepared for requests to brief the executive team and investors on the latest developments.
- Top-notch economists to discuss the results as needed and implications for global growth.
They were also informed that Market Intelligence does consulting assignments to assess the implications of the scenarios for a specific company.
Click here to learn more about the Global Scenario Service.