Three Key Takeaways From the Gartner Supply Chain Symposium

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Three Key Takeaways From the Gartner® Supply Chain Symposium | Xpo™

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Recently a team from Blue Yonder traveled to the Gartner® Supply Chain Symposium | Xpo™ 2025, joining over 4,000 chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) and other executives in Orlando, Fla. This year’s conference theme was “Disruption Ready. Futured-Focused. Value-Driven.”

In keeping with that theme, keynotes and sessions focused on preparing for supply chain volatility, mitigating risk, mastering disruptions and ensuring future readiness via digital transformation. The reason for this focus was clear: According to a recent Gartner® survey, only 29% of organizations have built the necessary capabilities to deliver on future performance.

So how can supply chain teams best leverage technology to prepare more effectively for a future characterized by volatility and disruption? The Blue Yonder team identified three key themes that emerged over the multi-day conference. To build resilience via digitalization, organizations need to:

  • Initiate change from the top. Supply chain executives play a crucial role in fostering innovation by identifying and rewarding early adopters within their organizations. By doing so, they create a culture that embraces and accelerates change.
  • Tailor artificial intelligence (AI) adoption. In the rapidly evolving tech landscape, it’s essential to choose AI solutions that align with the organization’s specific goals. Strategic implementation ensures that technology serves as a powerful tool for achieving real objectives.

  • Embrace the “never normal.” The concept of a stable “new normal” is becoming increasingly obsolete. Instead, organizations must learn to innovate and thrive amid constant change. Embracing this mindset enables resilience and agility in the face of uncertainty.

     

Let’s take a deeper dive into each of these key takeaways. How can supply chain teams check all these boxes and get future-ready—while still meeting daily deadlines and managing today’s pressing challenges?

It all begins with leadership—and investment


As the conference kicked off, Ken Chadwick, Distinguished VP of Advisory in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, emphasized the importance of executive buy-in and support in his keynote address.

“Supply chain is viewed today as both a top risk and opportunity among CEOs,” said Chadwick. “Supply chain can be a positive catalyst for growth if CSCOs match their ambitions with focused investments in areas including tech adoption, commercial innovation and developing the most critical capabilities that are yet unrealized within their own teams.”

 

Across thousands of Blue Yonder customers, we’ve witnessed the proven value of digitalization to cut costs, improve efficiency and achieve other key operational outcomes, while also making employees’ jobs easier and more satisfying. But change is rarely embraced quickly or easily by supply chain teams. For that reason, digital transformation must be coupled with a cultural transformation that’s championed by leadership.

While cultural change is never simple, Chadwick had some practical advice that dovetails with the experiences of our Blue Yonder Advisory & Transformation Services team. In short, executives can more successfully introduce digitalization by partnering with change management experts.

“The best organizations at digital adoption encourage their teams to see newly introduced technologies as part of an ongoing transition, rather than an isolated change,” said Chadwick. “Supply chain digital leaders are more likely to organize around new technologies, adopt digital centers of excellence, and leverage change leaders and strategic change management experts.”

Blue Yonder named a leader for the 14th consecutive time in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for WMS

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Use AI to achieve targeted, specific objectives

AI is readily accessible to just about every business today, but the Gartner® Supply Chain Symposium | Xpo™ served as a reminder that it needs to be applied thoughtfully and strategically. During the three-day event, many sessions focused on the topic of AI.

A common theme across the Symposium’s AI-focused sessions? Supply chain teams need to begin with the value proposition, the end benefits that AI can produce—instead of launching general, vague AI initiatives across the supply chain. Is forecasting accuracy a critical challenge? What about excess inventory? Or transportation agility and cost control? The best strategy is to begin with a crucial challenge, master it with AI, build credibility and move on to the next challenge.

We were excited to see our customer Micron lead a session called “AI and Sustainable Supply Chains: Micron’s Transformative Approach.” Matt Draper, Senior Director of Supply Chain Optimization, discussed how Micron leverages AI to boost efficiency, cut costs, and speed up operations amid geopolitical uncertainties and tariff challenges. Micron is focusing on the future by using AI thoughtfully to improve its sustainability, resilience and planning accuracy—key challenges in the semiconductor industry.

At Blue Yonder, we’ve seen customers like Micron leverage our end-to-end solutions to achieve a range of practical benefits in every supply chain competency and function. AI can also form the foundation for closer collaboration and partnership across functions, as well as across the network, for greater overall supply chain speed, agility and resilience.

But every AI implementation must look different, targeting the specific challenges, risks, opportunities and goals of every supply chain. It only makes sense to begin with the desired destination, then use AI to make the journey smarter, faster and ultimately more successful.

Transform volatility into a competitive edge

Remember a few years ago, when everyone was anticipating the return of a relatively stable supply chain environment called the “new normal”? As we’ve all gradually realized, stability is not returning. Instead, we need to embrace the “never normal”—and design supply chains for agility and resilience in the face of uncertainty.

Digital solutions from Blue Yonder are purpose-built to increase real-time, end-to-end visibility, identify exceptions and drive an orchestrated resolution across the supply chain. We were gratified to see our customer Sandisk Corporation, a leader in semiconductor memory technology, lead a session on its supply chain transformation enabled by Blue Yonder planning solutions.

The session—called “Blue Yonder: Insights From Sandisk on Building Agile, Dynamic and Resilient Supply Chains”—was led byAshish Rastogi, Senior Director of Global Supply Chain Management at Sandisk. He discussed how the company reimagines demand, inventory, supply planning and S&OP processes to deliver unique business value to customers. Despite geopolitical and trade disruptions, Sandisk is gaining an edge by transforming its supply chain with advanced Blue Yonder technology.

Sandisk has achieved impressive results with Blue Yonder software, including 10% improvement in its safety-stock and on-time delivery metrics, as well as a 95% performance level in fulfilling its delivery commitments. Clearly this semiconductor leader is using digital planning innovation to increase its disruption readiness.

Become more future-focused with Blue Yonder

While the conference theme focused on disruption and volatility, the Blue Yonder team left Orlando excited and inspired about the potential of digitalization to master those challenges.

We are proud to have been named a Leader in Three Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ reports.  You may access the reports here.

We’d love to continue the discussions we began at the Gartner® Supply Chain Symposium | Xpo™. Why not reach out to us today to get a conversation started?

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