Supply chain planning summit gartner 2025 takeaways

Here are my takeaways from the Gartner Supply Chain Planning Summit 2025 in London last week.
Obviously I couldn’t attend all sessions simultaneously, so this is what I saw, heard, and think about it all.

1) Start small. Step by step. Then scale.

Big transformations sound great on slides and are nice to talk about, but in reality: cost, delay, and endless upfront analysis.

• Chandan Jogur (@Mars Snacking): go M&M-size: bite-size (his reference, not mine). 
• Danny Van der Ster (Assa Abloy): practical, no-nonsense. Don’t over-blueprint. Start, learn, iterate. Clean data as you go, or you’ll never start.

• Gigaset + Board presentation: phased rollout; expand with proof.

2) Show, don’t tell: demos beat slides in my opinion

Some vendors kept it concrete.

• Kinaxis – Chris Warren: end-to-end demo with chat assist. Clear what’s real today. I loved this live demo.

• FuturMaster: demoed, but via slides. Not the same as a live product walkthrough.

Plenty of “frameworks” and slides from others.

3) Agentic AI everywhere… but it is not there yet

AI. AI.AI. “Agentic” slapped onto everything. Show an alert in a chat UI, and suddenly it’s an “agent.”
Vendors are overselling it. It’s not there yet.
I appreciated that Gartner’s view was more measured and didn’t just echo vendor hype.

Emily Nicholls from Anaplan also had a balanced view: AI isn’t magic; data still matters.

4) People, process, technology: still in that order?

We love the “people-process-tech” cliché. But I’m not fully sold on “process before tech” anymore.
Talking with Vineet Khanna and reflecting on this earlier post of mine and his:

• Some planners are close to retirement; critical know-how lives in their heads.
• The right tool can capture that knowledge and make it transferable.
• Build process iteratively alongside the tool. Prove value, then codify.

5) IBP/S&OP: it’s cross-functional and NOT owned by supply chain

Supply chain often tries to “own” S&OP/IBP. Then meetings become updates, not decisions.
Without GM/CEO sponsorship, decision rights, and the right incentives, it just doesn't deliver.
PepsiCo (Stephen Looney) reminder: executive buy-in is non-negotiable.
As Charlie Munger said: “Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.”

6) Collaborate beyond the walls (and get creative)

Basic stuff still often ignored: share forecasts and inventory, score suppliers transparently so they know what to improve on.
Also: try non-standard ideas.

• Combine transport with a local company to fill trucks.
• Buy strategic raw materials before a supplier’s fiscal year-end (win-win on P&L and price).

Ingrid Gonzalez McCarthy's point on being fearless resonated with some. Easy to say, hard to embed when “failed experiments” look like wasted spend.

7) Planning ↔ execution: close the loop

Many teams jump into scheduling while skipping the basics (RCCP, MPS).
Result: firefighting culture. And firefighters are seen as heroes so negative spiral.
Get the hierarchy right: strategy → RCCP/MPS → detailed scheduling → execution feedback.

8) Planners + AI: roles change? Jobs decrease ?

Multiple paths are possible, as shown in the visual by Gartner.

However, my perspective is this: short term, the net impact might feel small but in some years the impact will be big.
Expect a dip before the payoff: LLMs are limited today; agentic isn’t mature. Massive investments are not giving ROI in the very short term.
But, prepare now: better data, smaller experiments, faster iteration, new skills.
Planners shift toward validation, investigation, collaboration, and guiding the system. (I expand this in my other article.)

A planner with the right tools/skills can do what 5 used to do years ago.

9) My stance

Planners are rightly skeptical of grand claims. They’ll use the tool once it works, but first need to trust it.

That’s why we’re building Horizon the way we are: modular, transparent, quick to try.