Story originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal on May 4, 2020, produced in partnership with WSJ Custom Content. Excerpts from the story below. To see the full story visit WSJ.com.

Vikram Balasubramanian is Group Vice President of Product Management at Blue Yonder, a leading provider of digital fulfillment platforms and solutions. He believes advanced technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence can be most impactful in facilitating this shift toward proactive, predictive management of supply chains, and can help businesses anticipate and adjust for disruptions.

“Software tools to simulate the risks and opportunities in the market, whether they are external or internal,” are critical for businesses that need to stay a step ahead of disruptions, he says. “You can think of big bang events such as a tsunami or something like COVID-19, which have a high impact—a low probability of happening, but a high impact. So that’s a key type of risk scenario.”