“Intelligent Operations” technology, as opposed to traditional, transactional ERP systems, is an application category that gathers and provides context to diverse data sources, providing visibility to all of the participants in the value chain to enable faster decisions that eliminate waste and raise customer service levels.

With that in mind, supply chain executives across all industries have been developing digital strategies over the past several years. They are aggressively addressing integrated technologies, including the Internet of Things (IoT), on mobile, collaborative and cloud-based platforms, applying predictive analytics even more rapidly to all supply chain processes, further automating digital manufacturing, customer service and distribution with robotics and drones and artificial intelligence (AI).

An IBM Institute for Business Value survey of senior operational executives across a wide range of industries and geographies (“The future has arrived for intelligent operations”) found that COOs and CSCOs (chief supply chain officers) are aggressively reinventing business models, strategies and technological capabilities.

Eighty-eight percent of the highest-performing organizations surveyed report that AI is inevitable in their industry. For example, companies can apply AI technologies to sales and operations planning and other massive supply chain data pools to manage demand volatility, supply constraints, production scheduling and dynamic distribution.

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