What does Kinexions mean to you, personally?
“I’ve attended every single Kinexions since joining the company, so it’s become a milestone event in the year for me. What I love about it is that it’s an opportunity to unveil all of the work we’ve been doing over the previous months and, in some cases, years.
What’s also amazing is seeing how much the event has grown. It’s a reflection of the impact we’re having within supply chains and the increasing interest in what we’re doing. It’s definitely something I look forward to every year.”
How have the conversations with customers shifted this year?
“One major theme is speed. It’s the speed of change and the need to achieve value faster. The discussions I’m having centre around how organisations can make progress more quickly because the need is immediate.
Another theme, which has remained consistent, but appears in different forms, is AI. Customers understand, at least in theory, how AI could positively impact their supply chains, but many are still trying to understand exactly how to achieve that potential. Those are conversations we enjoy because that’s where our expertise lies. As a technology company, our role isn’t simply to deliver technology. It’s to deliver technology that drives outcomes and achieves results.”
In your keynote, you spoke about supply chain leaders making “big bets”. What did you mean by that?
“I was definitely playing off the Las Vegas theme, but it’s true. Organisations understand the potential of these technologies, yet the practical outcomes are still emerging. They’re being inundated with offers from different providers and realising that choosing who to build their operational orchestration capability with is a significant decision. Making the right choice can lead to success. Making the wrong one can have substantial consequences.
It has to go beyond surface-level capabilities. Questions around trust, governance, enterprise scale and security all become part of that decision-making process. It really is a big bet.”
We’re operating in volatile times, of course…
“Absolutely. Volatility is the new normal. I don’t think there’s a near-term path back to stability. Volatility manifests itself in different ways and affects different regions differently, but it’s here to stay. If organisations accept that reality and build solutions that can respond to it, they’re the ones that will succeed. That’s what Maestro and Kinaxis have always been about.
The underlying realities are constantly shifting, so the speed of recalculating plans, detecting changes, resolving issues and executing those resolutions becomes one of the most important elements of a good solution.”
We hear a lot about operational orchestration, but what does it actually look like inside Maestro?
“We wanted to define orchestration more clearly because everyone seems to use the word differently. Fundamentally, a supply chain is a manifestation of an enterprise’s operations. What we mean by orchestration is connecting the dots in a continuous, concurrent way rather than through a simple sequential process.
Operational orchestration is really an extension of Kinaxis’ longstanding mission. We’ve always viewed the supply chain as one connected network rather than a collection of isolated silos. The more factors we can consider when making decisions, the better the outcomes become…”
Read the full interview here!
- AI in Supply Chain
- Together in Events