Transform Your Supply Chain Planning and Marketing Strategies with Google Cloud and SAP Integration
Transform Your Supply Chain Planning and Marketing Strategies with Google Cloud and SAP Integration
The question is being asked in nearly every leadership meeting: “What’s our AI strategy?” This question often triggers a rush to launch numerous AI pilot programs across different departments. Whether it’s optimizing procurement, automating processes, or improving customer service, the potential of AI can seem limitless. But as the Harvard Business Review article “Stop Running So Many AI Pilots” warns, this approach often leads to what’s known as “pilot purgatory”— a collection of isolated experiments that fail to deliver real, lasting change.
Many companies end up with multiple small-scale AI projects that show marginal improvements but don’t achieve the transformative results they were hoping for. These pilots prove that AI works in small pockets but don’t help organizations scale or create lasting impact across the business.
Launching too many AI initiatives at once can result in scattered efforts that dilute focus and prevent any one project from delivering meaningful results. While it’s tempting to try several AI experiments, this approach often leads to minor improvements rather than significant business transformation.
The solution is simple: focus on one high-impact project. By dedicating time and resources to a single, strategic initiative, you can achieve far greater success.
Rather than juggling several small-scale pilots, the key to success is to concentrate on one important project, execute it well, and then expand from there. Here’s why this focused approach works:
By focusing on just one project, you gain a deeper understanding of AI’s full potential. You’ll be able to assess how it integrates into your business, how it can be implemented efficiently, and how to drive adoption across different teams.
A single, well-executed AI project that addresses a core business challenge will deliver more value than multiple smaller, less impactful initiatives. By making this one project a success, you create a solid foundation for scaling AI across the organization.
A successful AI initiative builds trust and momentum. Once your team sees the value of AI in solving a real business problem, it becomes much easier to gain support for future projects and expand AI’s impact.
While many organizations focus on the technical aspects of AI, the real challenges often lie within the people and processes involved. Successfully implementing AI requires more than just installing a new tool — it’s about transforming the way people work and ensuring your organization is ready for change.
The first hurdle is aligning leadership on which project to prioritize. Choosing the right use case is crucial to delivering value. This requires a strategic vision and the ability to make tough decisions that will impact the organization.
AI adoption requires buy-in from all levels of the organization, from senior leaders to frontline employees. It’s essential that everyone understands the goals of the project and how it will benefit the company. Without this understanding, resistance and low adoption rates are likely.
AI is not a plug-and-play solution. It changes how people work. This means you must prepare your teams for new workflows and help them navigate the shift to working with AI. Comprehensive change management is crucial for ensuring the new systems are embraced and used effectively.
To fully realize AI’s potential, your existing processes may need to be re-engineered. It’s not just about adding AI tools; it’s about ensuring your workflows are aligned to take full advantage of the new technology.
Implementing AI successfully requires careful planning, strategic alignment, and the right support. At Pluto7, we understand the challenges involved and offer solutions like Planning in a Box – Pi Agent to guide your journey from strategy to execution.
Here’s how we can help:
We work closely with your leadership team to identify the most valuable AI project to start with. By focusing on the highest-impact use case, we ensure that your AI initiative delivers the most value and creates a strong foundation for future growth.
Through structured workshops and proven frameworks, we help align all stakeholders within your organization. From senior leaders to team members on the ground, we ensure everyone is on the same page and invested in the success of the project.
Our team provides expert guidance on managing the organizational changes that come with AI adoption. From employee training to process reengineering, we help your company prepare for and embrace the transformation.
Once the strategy is in place, our expert technical teams work to build and deploy AI solutions that deliver tangible results. We ensure that the technology fulfills its promise, providing lasting value for your business.
The path to real AI-driven transformation requires more than just launching multiple pilots — it takes focus and strategic execution. By picking the right project, executing it well, and scaling from there, your company can achieve lasting success with AI.
Interested in seeing how Planning in a Box – Pi Agent can help streamline your AI journey? Request a demo today to learn more about how we can support your transformation and deliver real value with AI.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I still remember the thrill of ordering my first book from Amazon back in 1999. It felt like magic. The website seemed to know what I wanted, and the book arrived faster than I could have imagined. That was my first glimpse into a customer-centric supply chain, a concept that would define my career. A year later, I joined Cisco and witnessed the explosive growth of the internet, an expansion that laid the literal groundwork for the transformations we are seeing today.
For the past three decades, I’ve had the privilege of working alongside supply chain leaders, from planners in the trenches to CXOs and board members. I’ve seen the evolution of this critical business function firsthand, a journey that has taken us from paper-based ledgers to the dawn of truly autonomous, AI-driven operations.
The history of modern supply chain planning can be broken down into three distinct eras:
| Era | Time Period | Dominant Technology | Planner’s Primary Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Age of MRP & Spreadsheets | 1990s – Early 2000s | Mainframes, early ERPs, and the mighty spreadsheet | The Data Gatherer. Planners spent their days manually collecting and inputting data, wrestling with disconnected systems. |
| The Rise of Advanced Planning Systems (APS) | Mid 2000s – Late 2010s | On-premise APS software (e.g., i2, Manugistics), maturing ERPs (SAP, Oracle). | The Analyst. With better tools, planners could start to analyze data, run basic forecasts, and perform what-if scenarios, though often in a slow, batch-oriented manner. |
| The Dawn of the Digital Twin & Control Tower | Late 2010s – Early 2020s | Cloud computing, early AI/ML models, data visualization tools. | The Firefighter. Planners gained more visibility through dashboards but were still largely reactive, using data to respond to disruptions rather than prevent them. |
Throughout these shifts, one thing remained constant: the immense, often untapped potential locked away in a company’s data. Even with sophisticated software, a shocking 80% of enterprise planning is still managed on spreadsheets, creating massive inefficiencies. This is the challenge — and the opportunity — that has driven my work at Pluto7.
We are now on the cusp of the most significant transformation yet. The conversation is no longer about simply digitizing processes; it’s about creating an intelligent, autonomous supply chain. Here’s what the supply chain planning community will look like in 2026 and beyond:
From Creator to Curator: As Gartner and others have predicted, the role of the planner will fundamentally shift from creating forecasts to curating the outputs of AI. AI agents will handle the heavy lifting of data analysis and prediction, freeing up planners to focus on strategy and high-value exceptions.
The Rise of the “Super Planner”: I believe we are entering the era of the “Super Planner.” This individual is not a data entry clerk building pivot tables, but a strategic thinker who manages a team of AI agents with Pi Agent. They will use their experience and intuition to ask the right questions, validate AI-generated scenarios, and make the final, critical decisions.
Agentic AI as Co-intelligence: The future is agentic. AI agents, like Pluto7’s Pi Agent, will act as co-intelligence, providing real-time insights and automating complex workflows. These agents will connect to a multitude of data sources — from ERPs to social media trends — to provide a truly holistic view of the supply chain.
Democratization of Planning: AI will make sophisticated planning capabilities accessible to a much broader range of companies. The old model of buying expensive, one-size-fits-all software is being replaced by a more flexible, “build-your-own” approach, where companies can tailor AI solutions to their specific needs.
My experiences at Cisco and in the years since have instilled in me a deep understanding of the gap between the potential of technology and the reality of its implementation. I’ve seen firsthand the frustration of planners struggling with inadequate tools and the immense pressure on executives to make critical decisions with incomplete information.
That’s why I founded Pluto7. Our mission is to bridge that gap. With solutions like our “Planning in a Box” Pi Agent, we’re not just selling software; we’re providing a pathway to a new way of working. We’re helping companies build a solid data foundation, leverage the power of AI, and empower their planners to become the strategic leaders their organizations so desperately need.
The journey of the last 30 years has been incredible, but the next five will be revolutionary. The supply chain planning community is on the verge of an AI-powered renaissance, and I, for one, can’t wait to see what we build together.
Read here why we bet all in on Google.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
