Artificial intelligence is quite promising in helping supply chain leaders to address the talent gap, says Dawn Andre, chief product officer at Jaggaer.

Traditionally, supply chain managers have focused on balancing cost and service levels, but environmental, social and governance mandates; mounting regulations, and increasing instances of disruption multiply the risk and complexity supply chains face today. 

“We need to know who our suppliers are, and we need intelligence around that to understand how their decisions and what they do could impact our supply chains,” says Andre. “All of this is happening in real time, and if we apply the same approaches as in the past, we get an even wider gap. We need to solve this problem differently. One of the key areas that will help accelerate the closure of that gap is artificial intelligence.”

AI is necessary, she says, because what used to work — training new people during their onboarding process — no longer prevails. Yet, new employees still need to know company policies, processes and procedures. If there’s no mentor sitting next to them to answer questions, that knowledge gap can be filled through AI, Andre says.

In her view, AI has three functions to perform. First, it can handle mundane tasks; new talent doesn’t have to deal with that anymore. It takes repetitive, low-value tasks off the shoulders of workers, she says. Second, it has embedded training materials. Chatbots can answer questions and direct employees to the next steps to take. The third and perhaps most crucial piece is the data-gleaning function the technology performs. Based on its data analysis, AI gains insights that lead to recommendations for individuals or groups. 

“It frees us to think more strategically and process greater amounts of data than a human could possibly do,” Andre says.

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