Blue Yonder reinforces its commitment to product innovations and its customers at annual conference, while unlocking the power of generative AI and building on its platform

Blue Yonder Holding, Inc. (Blue Yonder), a leader of digital supply chain transformations, today released its Q1 2024 company highlights and further showcased its vision to build the supply chain of the future at ICON 2024, its annual customer conference.

Quarterly Company Highlights

In Q1 2024, Blue Yonder showed significant progress in several areas of its business, including:

• Announced the acquisition of flexis AG and a binding agreement to acquire One Network Enterprises, marking approximately $1 billion in M&A investments covering three acquisitions since Q4 2023.

• Added 34 new customer logos in Q1 2024. Some of the customers who selected or extended their footprint with Blue Yonder during the quarter include:
  • Americas: Alimentos Prosalud, Corporación Pipsa, Dos Pinos, Driscoll’s, Ferrero, Haleon, Herdez, Newell Brands, R.E. Michel Company, Roma Prince S.A., Sportman’s Warehouse, Umbral, Unilever, Utz, Vinoteca
  • APAC/EMEA: ASDA, BrandSafway, Deutsche Edelstahlwerke Specialty Steel, Ferrero, Metro, Panasonic Connect, Pegatron, Posten Bring AS, Rewe Group

• Featured in 18 key technology industry analyst reports from Gartner and IDC (see full list below).

Next-Generation Supply Chains

During ICON 2024, Blue Yonder leadership unveiled how an end-to-end supply chain platform powered by cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) and a unified data cloud are helping companies pivot through disruptions to create a more resilient supply chain. Blue Yonder showcased how attendees can “superpower” their supply chains by leaping across organizational siloes, planning into the future, and moving with the speed of change to meet their digital transformation and sustainability goals.

“Imagine a world where businesses have the resiliency to bounce back after every disruption; where flexibility doesn’t come at the expense of efficacy; where technology turns supply chain operators into superheroes,” said Duncan Angove, CEO, Blue Yonder. “Not only is this possible, but it is Blue Yonder’s vision. The innovations of the past few years – from the data cloud to generative AI to end-to-end connectivity – are now allowing Blue Yonder to help customers solve larger supply chain problems faster and give them greater visibility. With Blue Yonder’s innovations, businesses will be able to solve challenges quickly to keep their supply chains moving and meet customer demand. The result is that our customers are faster to respond; are more resilient, engaged, and competitive; and can deliver greater value.”

Last year at ICON, Blue Yonder announced that it was investing over $1 billion in innovations over the next three years. The company is delivering on its promise, building out its Blue Yonder Platform to be purpose-built for AI to improve data quality and decision speed. Today, the Blue Yonder Platform processes 10 billion predictions a day. The company has also doubled the size of its engineering organization with more than 300 scrum teams working on new capabilities. This growth allowed Blue Yonder to launch its largest product release in the history of the company earlier this year.

To showcase the power of the Blue Yonder Platform, the following was highlighted on ICON main stage:

• Generative AI and Supply Chain Agents: Blue Yonder has been a leader in the AI space, having leaned into predictive AI and developed patented supply chain solvers, allowing its customers to predict demand – to the tune of 10 billion predictions a day – and pivot through disruptions. Over the past 10 years, Blue Yonder has expanded its use of AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities as new AI techniques became available, e.g., probabilistic AI, heuristics, deep meta learning, etc.
  
  
  
  Blue Yonder is now also driving innovation by bringing together generative AI models that are adept at language, images, and content creation with the company’s patented solvers and predictive AI capabilities to empower businesses to solve supply chain’s biggest challenges.
  
  
  
  Introduced last year, Blue Yonder Orchestrator is the framework for building generative AI-based supply chain capabilities. Blue Yonder is using Blue Yonder Orchestrator to design intelligent assistants, or AI Agents, to support supply chain professionals. Blue Yonder is partnering with its customers to configure these AI Agents to ensure they meet their needs, helping to automate tasks and enhance decision-making speed, quality and resilience. The AI Agents can proactively identify opportunities and risks, make recommendations, and execute the decisions through a set of APIs. Business users can quickly access recommendations, predictive insights, and intelligent decisions using their dedicated AI Agent to ensure they generate the best outcomes to positively impact their supply chain. As part of this effort, Blue Yonder announced a new AI Innovation Studio at its Dallas office where it can host design-led AI Agent workshops with customers.
  
  
  
  To further strengthen its AI capabilities, Blue Yonder recently hired Wade Gerten as senior vice president, Generative AI and Andrea Morgan-Vandome as chief innovation officer, while also expanding its already robust team of AI researchers and engineers to include world-class generative AI talent.

• Leaning Into Cognitive: As part of its largest product release earlier this year, Blue Yonder announced the launch of its cognitive class of solutions, starting with Cognitive Demand Planning. These cognitive solutions are built on a modern SaaS native platform and use AI to reimagine how work is done by harnessing the power of the data cloud. With an adaptable and event-driven framework, these solutions transform how companies tackle uncertainty in their supply chain management. The company is planning to launch more cognitive solutions, including:
  • Cognitive Integrated Business Planning is an innovative approach to a common challenge that automates and intelligently explores supply chain strategies. It assesses multiple scenarios simultaneously, offering intelligent options to meet business objectives. Conventional strategies like what-if planning and simulations often demand considerable manual input from supply chain professionals to comprehend disruptions, collect data, run simulations, and make decisions, particularly when time is limited. This new solution will increase decision speed and accuracy, and significantly reduce manual work.
  • Cognitive Merchandise Financial Planning flips the discipline on its head. Today's merchandise planners are over-reliant on sales history and spend a disproportionate amount of time in the low value quest to build the perfect plan, only to see that plan struggle to be achieved when it meets reality, resulting in locked capital and unnecessary discounting. Blue Yonder's advanced AI draws the best out of planners by autonomously constructing data-driven, constraint-aware plans that intuitively recognize the difference between trend and blip. This allows merchandisers to direct their valuable time toward seizing the opportunity present in disruption, aided by AI-driven recommendations that align actions to strategic goals.
  • Cognitive Execution is reimagining operations with an AI-driven solution that looks at the upstream and downstream processes across planning, warehouse, transport, and order management to optimize cost to serve and improve on-time, in-full delivery. By leveraging the Blue Yonder Platform and composable services, companies can eliminate barriers between systems allowing for end-to-end optimization. This in turn enables supply chain leaders to predict disruptions, make intra-day decisions, automate resolutions, and orchestrate actions. Businesses can stay flexible and responsive to changes in demand, supply, or constraints, ensuring more resilient, agile, and autonomous supply chains.

• Composable Journeys: A Composable Journey enables customers to consume Blue Yonder’s innovations to move to a modern, autonomous end-to-end supply chain. This in turn accelerates transformation, reduces time to value, and lowers cost of ownership. Blue Yonder’s customers are experiencing up to a 12-time return on investment (ROI) from the Composable Journey. Blue Yonder works with customers to review their current and future supply chain vision to build a roadmap that includes optimizing their existing Blue Yonder investments, deploying these solutions seamlessly, integrating microservices, and running these investments on a shared data model to leverage cognitive capabilities. Because the journey is composable, it can be implemented in weeks instead of months at a pace that works for the customer while still leveraging their existing Blue Yonder investments. As part of the process, Blue Yonder offers change management and value realization services that support a customer’s transformation journey, allowing them to maximize business value.

“Blue Yonder ICON continues to be the premiere supply chain event thanks to our dedicated customers who show up every year to showcase how they are using our technology to better their supply chains,” said Patricia Harris, chief marketing officer, Blue Yonder. “It is also an invaluable event with regards to learning as a result of the countless breakout sessions on various topics and the Innovation Experience where customers can see our innovative technology firsthand. Each year at ICON we highlight the key ways we are innovating to help our customers thrive in the ever-changing world of supply chain. From building resilience into their operations to improving their sustainability practices to meeting consumer demands, our Blue Yonder solutions are pivotal to helping our customers grow their businesses and succeed.”

Additional Company Highlights

• Blue Yonder was highlighted in a recent Microsoft blog written by Judson Althoff, executive vice president and chief commercial officer, ahead of Microsoft’s FY24 Q3 earnings. Read the blog post “Leading in the era of AI: How Microsoft’s platform differentiation and Copilot empowerment are driving AI Transformation.”

• Learn how Blue Yonder’s customers are persisting during times of disruption to digitally transform their supply chains and reimagine the consumer experience:
  • Blue Yonder Drives Transportation Optimization at Kimberly-Clark
  • The Source: Supply Chain Digital Disruptors (video)

• Heading into Q2 2024, Blue Yonder’s Industry Strategy team shares insights shaped by their industry expertise, conversations with customers, and trends that are top of mind for customers and partners. Read their insights in this blog post.

• Technology industry analyst recognitions in Q1 2024:
  • Gartner®, Market Guide for Distributed Order Management Systems, 2024
  • Gartner, Tool: Gartner’s Hype Cycle Builder
  • Gartner, Tool: Forecast and Market Share Data Publication Schedule for 2024, 4Q23 Update
  • Gartner, Market Guide for Cloud Extended Planning and Analysis Solutions, 2024
  • Gartner, Market Guide for Supply Chain Network Design Tools, 2024
  • Gartner, Tool: Vendor Identification for Supply Chain Network Design Tools
  • Gartner, Market Opportunity Map: Supply Chain Management Software, Worldwide
  • Gartner, Consult the Board: Databricks and Snowflake Convergence
  • Gartner, Magic Quadrant™ for Transportation Management Systems, 2024¹
  • Gartner, Critical Capabilities for Transportation Management Systems, 2024²
  • IDC, PeerScape: Practices to Optimize Omni-Channel Order Orchestration and Fulfillment
  • IDC, Market Glance: Transportation and Global Trade, 1Q24
  • IDC, Planning Smartness: AI in Retail Scenario Planning
  • IDC, Top 5 Views for GenAI and Analytics at NRF 2024
  • IDC, MarketScape: Worldwide Warehouse Management 2024 Vendor Assessment
  • IDC, Market Glance: European Supply Chain Planning, 1Q24
  • IDC, Worldwide Retail Industry Spending Guide Taxonomy, 2024
  • IDC, ProductScape: Worldwide Warehouse Management Systems, 2024

Sources:

¹Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems, Brock Johns, Oscar Sanchez Duran, Carly West, Manav Jain, 27 March 2024.

²Gartner, Critical Capabilities for Transportation Management Systems, Brock Johns, Oscar Sanchez Duran, Carly West, Manav Jain, 27 March 2024.

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About Blue Yonder

Blue Yonder is the world leader in digital supply chain transformation. Global retailers, manufacturers and logistics providers leverage Blue Yonder to optimize their supply chains from planning through fulfillment, delivery and returns. Blue Yonder’s AI-embedded, interoperable supply chain solutions are connected end-to-end via a unified platform and data cloud, enabling business to collaborate in real time across functions, which supports more agile decision-making, improved customer satisfaction, profitable growth, and more resilient, sustainable supply chains. Blue Yonder - Fulfill your Potential^TM www.blueyonder.com

“Blue Yonder” is a trademark or registered trademark of Blue Yonder Group, Inc. Any trade, product or service name referenced in this document using the name “Blue Yonder” is a trademark and/or property of Blue Yonder Group, Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of the companies with which they are associated.

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