This contributed story by Duncan Angove, CEO at Blue Yonder, originally appeared in Solutions Review on Feb. 26, 2024. Excerpts from the byline article below. To read the full article visit solutionsreview.com.

Efficient, effective, and resilient supply chains, by their very nature, require the busting of silos. Paradoxically, supply chain planning and execution technologies have historically fallen short of this requirement. In contrast to ERP and CRM tools, which were successfully platformed years ago for the enterprise, supply chain management tools have largely remained as point solutions. Some vendors may claim to have “changed the game” regarding supply chain planning, but it certainly doesn’t feel that way from a customer perspective.

Legacy database technologies and computing limitations have compelled supply chain solution providers to settle on aggregating data and applying simplified rules-based algorithms to deliver more responsive and cost-effective solutions to common supply chain problems. Unfortunately, this approach further exacerbated siloed decision-making due to the inevitable latency in communication between systems and the myriad of failed attempts to standardize communication protocols across trading partners. Supply chain technology vendors added fuel to the fire by focusing on “fixing” point solutions rather than going to the source of the problem—the disconnected data and the infrastructure.

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Three critical pieces of technology will upend conventional thinking and catalyze a global supply chain transformation: the data cloud, generative AI, and the underlying, near-infinite intelligence of microservices architecture seen on the platforms of today’s public clouds.