55% of business leaders in supply chain and top bosses in finance plan to invest in Artificial Intelligence in the next couple of years according to a recent Forrester survey. This stat tells us AI is increasingly being seen as a technology capable of driving effective decision making and improving operational processes.

Supply chain networks are the future and we’re not the only ones speaking about it. Multi-Enterprise Business Networks are becoming a hot topic for analyst firms such as Gartner and many solutions are touting their network of partners and suppliers.

Agility has been a huge focus for organizations as we enter unpredictable waters of the current and future economy. Increasing customer expectations, global business challenges and digitization are greatly impacting how we market and sell our products and provide a high level customer experience through the supply chain. And agility is critical to sustained business success.

Digitization has changed everything. It’s changed not only how we interact but how we make decisions with readily available information. This accessibility to information and organizations has flattened the playing field for every organization as they look to market and sell their wares.

In part 1 of this post (read here), we spoke about key trends facing supply chain leaders in terms of customer focus, end-to-end supply chain visibility, rising customer requirements, operations still being a core issue and asking the right questions.