As part of a longstanding succession plan, AGiLE Business Media Chairman & CEO Mitch Mac Donald announces that, effective July 1, Publisher, President, and Chief Operating Officer (COO) Gary Master will ascend to the position of president and chief executive officer (CEO).
A founding partner of AGiLE, Master has distinguished himself as a top performer and the market’s go-to resource for B2B marketing insights and strategies during his 21-year tenure. In his new role, he will continue to have overall responsibility for all operations, including editorial, sales and marketing, audience development, and new business development. He will, of course, continue to be a key driver of sales and business development in his role as publisher.
Master brings a clear strategic vision for the expansion of the company’s many footprints in the logistics and supply chain sectors, including, most notably, the deepening of its longstanding strategic business partnerships with leading professional associations like the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) and MHI.
Mac Donald, a fellow founding partner of AGiLE, will continue his planned transition to retirement. He will remain chairman of the company in an advisory role and will further transition to the permanent position of board director by year’s end.
“Gary, in concert with Group Editorial Director David Maloney, has a strong and clear vision for our future, and together they will be leading us to even greater success,” said Mac Donald in making the announcement. “We could not be more pleased and enthusiastic about the opportunities this presents, and we have full confidence Gary is the leader that can best help us exploit these myriad opportunities for our future.”
“Since we launched AGiLE in 2002, we have seen the once-siloed logistics worlds of transportation, material handling, and technology evolve and advance into integrated and cohesive supply chains,” Master said. “As the market has evolved, so have we. Under Mitch’s two decades of stewardship, AGiLE quickly attained, and then maintained, its position as publisher of the market’s leading media brands by embracing changing market dynamics in new and innovative ways. And, as much as things have changed since 2002, more and more rapid change lies ahead. AGiLE’s clear mission will be to remain a leader by not only embracing that change but also doing our part to drive it.”
A growing number of organizations are identifying ways to use GenAI to streamline their operations and accelerate innovation, using that new automation and efficiency to cut costs, carry out tasks faster and more accurately, and foster the creation of new products and services for additional revenue streams. That was the conclusion from ISG’s “2024 ISG Provider Lens global Generative AI Services” report.
The most rapid development of enterprise GenAI projects today is happening on text-based applications, primarily due to relatively simple interfaces, rapid ROI, and broad usefulness. Companies have been especially aggressive in implementing chatbots powered by large language models (LLMs), which can provide personalized assistance, customer support, and automated communication on a massive scale, ISG said.
However, most organizations have yet to tap GenAI’s potential for applications based on images, audio, video and data, the report says. Multimodal GenAI is still evolving toward mainstream adoption, but use cases are rapidly emerging, and with ongoing advances in neural networks and deep learning, they are expected to become highly integrated and sophisticated soon.
Future GenAI projects will also be more customized, as the sector sees a major shift from fine-tuning of LLMs to smaller models that serve specific industries, such as healthcare, finance, and manufacturing, ISG says. Enterprises and service providers increasingly recognize that customized, domain-specific AI models offer significant advantages in terms of cost, scalability, and performance. Customized GenAI can also deliver on demands like the need for privacy and security, specialization of tasks, and integration of AI into existing operations.
Progress in generative AI (GenAI) is poised to impact business procurement processes through advancements in three areas—agentic reasoning, multimodality, and AI agents—according to Gartner Inc.
Those functions will redefine how procurement operates and significantly impact the agendas of chief procurement officers (CPOs). And 72% of procurement leaders are already prioritizing the integration of GenAI into their strategies, thus highlighting the recognition of its potential to drive significant improvements in efficiency and effectiveness, Gartner found in a survey conducted in July, 2024, with 258 global respondents.
Gartner defined the new functions as follows:
Agentic reasoning in GenAI allows for advanced decision-making processes that mimic human-like cognition. This capability will enable procurement functions to leverage GenAI to analyze complex scenarios and make informed decisions with greater accuracy and speed.
Multimodality refers to the ability of GenAI to process and integrate multiple forms of data, such as text, images, and audio. This will make GenAI more intuitively consumable to users and enhance procurement's ability to gather and analyze diverse information sources, leading to more comprehensive insights and better-informed strategies.
AI agents are autonomous systems that can perform tasks and make decisions on behalf of human operators. In procurement, these agents will automate procurement tasks and activities, freeing up human resources to focus on strategic initiatives, complex problem-solving and edge cases.
As CPOs look to maximize the value of GenAI in procurement, the study recommended three starting points: double down on data governance, develop and incorporate privacy standards into contracts, and increase procurement thresholds.
“These advancements will usher procurement into an era where the distance between ideas, insights, and actions will shorten rapidly,” Ryan Polk, senior director analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, said in a release. "Procurement leaders who build their foundation now through a focus on data quality, privacy and risk management have the potential to reap new levels of productivity and strategic value from the technology."
Businesses are cautiously optimistic as peak holiday shipping season draws near, with many anticipating year-over-year sales increases as they continue to battle challenging supply chain conditions.
That’s according to the DHL 2024 Peak Season Shipping Survey, released today by express shipping service provider DHL Express U.S. The company surveyed small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to gauge their holiday business outlook compared to last year and found that a mix of optimism and “strategic caution” prevail ahead of this year’s peak.
Nearly half (48%) of the SMEs surveyed said they expect higher holiday sales compared to 2023, while 44% said they expect sales to remain on par with last year, and just 8% said they foresee a decline. Respondents said the main challenges to hitting those goals are supply chain problems (35%), inflation and fluctuating consumer demand (34%), staffing (16%), and inventory challenges (14%).
But respondents said they have strategies in place to tackle those issues. Many said they began preparing for holiday season earlier this year—with 45% saying they started planning in Q2 or earlier, up from 39% last year. Other strategies include expanding into international markets (35%) and leveraging holiday discounts (32%).
Sixty percent of respondents said they will prioritize personalized customer service as a way to enhance customer interactions and loyalty this year. Still others said they will invest in enhanced web and mobile experiences (23%) and eco-friendly practices (13%) to draw customers this holiday season.
The practice consists of 5,000 professionals from Accenture and from Avanade—the consulting firm’s joint venture with Microsoft. They will be supported by Microsoft product specialists who will work closely with the Accenture Center for Advanced AI. Together, that group will collaborate on AI and Copilot agent templates, extensions, plugins, and connectors to help organizations leverage their data and gen AI to reduce costs, improve efficiencies and drive growth, they said on Thursday.
Accenture and Avanade say they have already developed some AI tools for these applications. For example, a supplier discovery and risk agent can deliver real-time market insights, agile supply chain responses, and better vendor selection, which could result in up to 15% cost savings. And a procure-to-pay agent could improve efficiency by up to 40% and enhance vendor relations and satisfaction by addressing urgent payment requirements and avoiding disruptions of key services
Likewise, they have also built solutions for clients using Microsoft 365 Copilot technology. For example, they have created Copilots for a variety of industries and functions including finance, manufacturing, supply chain, retail, and consumer goods and healthcare.
Another part of the new practice will be educating clients how to use the technology, using an “Azure Generative AI Engineer Nanodegree program” to teach users how to design, build, and operationalize AI-driven applications on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform. The online classes will teach learners how to use AI models to solve real-world problems through automation, data insights, and generative AI solutions, the firms said.
“We are pleased to deepen our collaboration with Accenture to help our mutual customers develop AI-first business processes responsibly and securely, while helping them drive market differentiation,” Judson Althoff, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at Microsoft, said in a release. “By bringing together Copilots and human ambition, paired with the autonomous capabilities of an agent, we can accelerate AI transformation for organizations across industries and help them realize successful business outcomes through pragmatic innovation.”
Census data showed that overall retail sales in October were up 0.4% seasonally adjusted month over month and up 2.8% unadjusted year over year. That compared with increases of 0.8% month over month and 2% year over year in September.
October’s core retail sales as defined by NRF — based on the Census data but excluding automobile dealers, gasoline stations and restaurants — were unchanged seasonally adjusted month over month but up 5.4% unadjusted year over year.
Core sales were up 3.5% year over year for the first 10 months of the year, in line with NRF’s forecast for 2024 retail sales to grow between 2.5% and 3.5% over 2023. NRF is forecasting that 2024 holiday sales during November and December will also increase between 2.5% and 3.5% over the same time last year.
“October’s pickup in retail sales shows a healthy pace of spending as many consumers got an early start on holiday shopping,” NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz said in a release. “October sales were a good early step forward into the holiday shopping season, which is now fully underway. Falling energy prices have likely provided extra dollars for household spending on retail merchandise.”
Despite that positive trend, market watchers cautioned that retailers still need to offer competitive value propositions and customer experience in order to succeed in the holiday season. “The American consumer has been more resilient than anyone could have expected. But that isn’t a free pass for retailers to under invest in their stores,” Nikki Baird, VP of strategy & product at Aptos, a solutions provider of unified retail technology based out of Alpharetta, Georgia, said in a statement. “They need to make investments in labor, customer experience tech, and digital transformation. It has been too easy to kick the can down the road until you suddenly realize there’s no road left.”
A similar message came from Chip West, a retail and consumer behavior expert at the marketing, packaging, print and supply chain solutions provider RRD. “October’s increase proved to be slightly better than projections and was likely boosted by lower fuel prices. As inflation slowed for a number of months, prices in several categories have stabilized, with some even showing declines, offering further relief to consumers,” West said. “The data also looks to be a positive sign as we kick off the holiday shopping season. Promotions and discounts will play a prominent role in holiday shopping behavior as they are key influencers in consumer’s purchasing decisions.”