Market Perspectives

The annual Ventana Research Digital Innovation Awards showcase advances in the productivity and potential of business applications as well as technology that contributes significantly to the improved processes and performance of an organization. Our goal is to recognize technology and vendors that have introduced noteworthy digital innovations to advance business and IT that optimize organizational resilience and workforce readiness.

Ventana Research has awarded Kinaxis' Planning.AI its prestigious 2022 Digital Innovation Award in Supply Chain. This award is given to the vendor that best exemplifies innovation and change in the supply chain in support of an organization’s ability to maximize its people, processes, information and technology. All finalists in the Operations and Supply Chain category were considered for this award.

A new generation of innovative digital technology is now available for organizations to optimize operations and the supply chain, better aligning with customer demand and the fulfillment of products and services. Utilizing these innovative resources can dramatically improve the value of products and services, creating competitive differentiation. The effective application and use of analytics, collaboration, machine learning, planning and the internet of things can increase the agility of the supply chain across sourcing, manufacturing, distribution and logistics to ensure full value is realized from the inventory of products.

Ventana Research selected Kinaxis for the 15th Annual Digital Innovation Award in Supply Chain for its Planning.AI tool for sales and operations planning. Planning.AI provides executives and managers with a better idea of the impact of decisions under different scenarios. It addresses an important business need: Our recent Analytics and Data Benchmark Research found that only 13% of organizations have technology that is completely adequate for planning and devising what-if scenarios. Planning.AI is designed to address a challenge many organizations face because advanced analytics aren’t readily accessible to business users. Planning.AI improves supply and demand forecasting by employing machine learning for demand sensing and forecasting built on internal and external data sources. And it uses an array of analytical techniques to address complex planning problems, arriving at optimized solutions that achieve a desired balance of trade-offs between considerations such as cost, carbon impact, delivery fulfillment, capacity utilization and revenue.

Changes to the global trade environment and the impact of social and political ructions on supply chains have forced organizations to rethink supply chain strategies, placing greater emphasis on resiliency. This shift almost always raises costs unless organizations devise ways of mitigating the impact. Software can provide the ability to plan, react and execute in shorter time frames to promote agility. It can also devise new ways to reduce inefficiencies in a highly complex process. Organizations with long or complex supply chains should review sales and operations planning processes to assess areas for improvement, and investigate Kinaxis to determine how it might enhance resiliency and competitiveness.

If you have not examined how Kinaxis and Planning.AI can help your supply and demand changing planning and processes, it is well worth your time. Congratulations, Kinaxis, for your digital innovation for the supply chain.