317: How Decision Intelligence is Transforming Supply Chains, with Aera Technology

Today I’m joined by Aera Technology, a forward-thinking company that is on a mission to drive beyond digital transformation and make businesses smarter, dynamic, digital, and wildly successful. Aera Technology is the Decision Intelligence Company that makes business agility happen. Their innovative cloud platform integrates with your existing systems to digitize, augment, and automate decision-making in real-time. In the era of digital acceleration, Aera helps enterprises around the world transform how they respond to the ever-changing environment. Today Fred Laluyaux, CEO at Aera Technology, joins me to chat all about the company: what they do; using AI to reimagine how organizations operate; the rise of citizen data scientists; and harnessing the power of Decision Intelligence.   IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:   [06.40] Fred’s background and exciting career journey as a tech entrepreneur. “I’ve spent the last 25 years of my life building technology that helps large organizations manage their performance... (and) modeling complex problems – I feel like I’ve been trying to solve a giant puzzle for the last 25 years!” [09.17] From cycle speed to increasing complexity, the key changes and challenges faced by today’s supply chains. “All this new technology is allowing us to move the envelope. But the complexity of the problems that we have to resolve is also increasing exponentially. So you have this race between a goal post that’s moving very fast, and technology that’s trying to catch up... The problem goes beyond supply chain. ” [13.10] An overview of Aera – what they do, how they help their customers and their vision for customers, and for the industry. “The vision we had is simple… building a technology that would allow the thinking to be connected to the doing.” [16.40] Decision Intelligence: what it means, why Gartner has recognized it as a top industry trend for this year, and how it works with Aera. [25.45] A closer look at Aera’s four key product areas: Aera Understands, Aera Recommends, Aera Predicts and Aera Acts. [35.00] Fred’s reflections on the balance between people and technology, the importance of collaboration and why Aera is embracing a new era of citizen data scientists. “The operationalization of data science is really the next frontier.” [38.04] The ideal client for Aera, a closer look at onboarding and integration, and the importance of finding the balance between time to go live and time to value. “Its not a competition between the human operator and the system – it’s a collaboration.” [44.03] A case study showing how Aera helped a key client increase their accuracy and response rate, leading to an increase in customer satisfaction, a decrease in order cancellations and, ultimately, higher profit. “What excites me about this adventure is that we’re deploying a technology that’s new to enable companies to do things that were not happening before.” RESOURCES AND LINKS MENTIONED:   Head over to Aera Technology’s website now to find out more and discover how they could help you too. You can also connect with Aera and keep up to date with the latest over on LinkedIn or Twitter, or you can connect with Fred on LinkedIn. If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear from another brand that is embracing the power of AI and machine learning, why not check out episode 290, Tomorrow’s Insights Delivered Today: Enabling Operational Automation, featuring Caleb Nelson of Sifted. And if you were intrigued by Gartner's top trend, Decision Intelligence, and are keen to discover some of the other trends you need to know about for 2023, make sure to dive into Logtech Live With Eric Johnson. Eric is Senior Editor of Technology at the Journal Of Commerce, so if something's going down in supply chain, he's the first to know! Check out our other podcasts HERE.