How does it feel being at your first Kinexions as CEO?
“It has been fantastic. It has been a really positive event. Obviously, all of this takes a lot of work and effort from the broader team and they have done a tremendous job. It has been a great way for me to connect with a lot of our customers, our partner ecosystem and some of our investors. The overarching Kinaxis community comes together at this event here in North America and we will do the same again in Europe and India later this year.”
What makes this year’s Kinexions particularly important for Kinaxis and its customers?
“Some of the customers wanted to see who the new CEO is and hear from him. Beyond that, it was important for us to clearly articulate our strategy and our evolution.
We are continuing to invest in the foundations of the world’s leading supply chain planning and decisioning platform, Maestro. From there, we are extending into agentic orchestration and what we outlined as our vision for operational orchestration.
It is also always about hearing from customers, learning how they have deployed Kinaxis and Maestro, listening to our partners, facilitating connections and encouraging cross-learning. That happens at every Kinexions, but this one was particularly important because we wanted to be very clear about our product strategy.
That is why we over-indexed on it during the first day. Between Andrew (Bell), Manik (Sharma) and myself, and through all the demonstrations we showed, we helped bring customers along on the journey we’re on as we continue to bring to market the world’s leading supply chain planning, decisioning and now orchestration platform.”
In your keynote speech, you outlined some of the challenges supply chain leaders are navigating right now. What is the biggest shift?
“The biggest challenge to emerge over the last 18 to 24 months is that there is much greater volatility on both the demand and supply side. The rate of change is far greater than anything we’ve seen before.
Supply chain professionals are dealing with that volatility while also facing pressure from CEOs, boards and CFOs to drive the next wave of productivity, improve working capital efficiency and reduce costs. On top of that, they are being asked as to what they are doing with AI.
A lot of things are converging that are new and different, but they also create fantastic opportunities for us to deepen our relationships and partnerships with customers.”
You talk about operational orchestration and moving from decisions to outcomes. How do you define that?
“Business leaders are trying to optimise outcomes around cost, cash and service, and there is a fourth dimension as well, which is risk. To achieve those outcomes, organisations have to sense both internal and external signals. They have to make decisions and plan based upon those signals. Then they have to execute and act and go through learning cycles.
That is the orchestration loop we talked about. To achieve the outcomes, you have to sense, plan, act and learn continuously. Stitching those activities together is what ultimately drives business outcomes…”
Read the full interview here!
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