Beyond the ERP Tradeoff: Building AI-ready Operations

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Beyond the ERP Tradeoff: Building AI-ready Operations"

Supply Chain Now | July 27, 2026
Host(s): Scott Lewton & Wiley Jones
Featured Guest: Yendra Zotek (Board Member, former CIO Chobani, ex-Chief Supply Chain Officer HelloFresh)

---

Episode Overview

This episode explores the evolving landscape of supply chain technology, focusing on moving "beyond the ERP tradeoff" to create truly AI-ready operations. Hosts Scott Lewton and Wiley Jones welcome industry leader Yendra Zotek for a deep dive into how companies can balance systems and people, the trade-offs between monolithic and best-of-breed systems, and what the next era of AI-native operations will look like. The conversation emphasizes practical leadership, operating models, cross-functional alignment, and preserving dignity and purpose for supply chain professionals amidst rapid technological change.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. People vs. Systems: The Real Performance Equation

[08:29]

• Yendra’s Core Belief:
  "Performance outcome is the outcome of the inputs, and the inputs are people and systems. Systems can enable people—or hold them back."
• Early Lessons:
  • Yendra shares stories from his family's 700-year-old Czech farm, highlighting how simple systems, paired with accountability, led to operational effectiveness.
  • Career at McKinsey: Frustration with the classic big "black box" ERP systems that block performance ["I was told so many times you cannot get data because of … the big black box ERP system."].
  • At Chobani, a $1.5B company succeeded without a formal ERP, thanks to empowered people.
• Takeaway:
  The right systems amplify good teams but cannot replace them; process maturity must precede tech investments.

2. Two Operating Models—Their Tradeoffs & Weak Points

[12:26]

• Centralized/Monolithic (Black Box/ERP):
  – Offers “one source of truth,” but is inflexible and slow to evolve ("…let's talk about the 2028 roadmap."). – Leads to inefficient workarounds and shadow IT.
• Best of Breed/Fragmented:
  – Custom-built for unique needs, allowing fast experimentation but requires heavy integration efforts. – “Integration tax”: both monetary (hard integration work) and human (huge war-room meetings daily).
• Ultimate Lesson:
  Both models introduce a form of “people tax”—coordination burdens fall on human teams to bridge system gaps.

Quote:
"Both had minuses. Both you can live with thanks to people, but both can slow you down." – Yendra Zotek, [15:33]

3. Company DNA—How Identity Drives Tech Choices

[20:01]

• A company’s self-image (tech-first vs. industry-first) shapes not just systems, but also culture and even office perks (the "trash bin" anecdote: tech gets $80 bins, ops $20 ones).
• Avoid silos: true integration aligns everyone to business goals, regardless of function.

"It has to start at the top... The leader has to message to the whole organization. The whole organization has three goals, three objectives. Not marketing objectives, not IT objectives. They are business objectives." – Yendra Zotek, [22:28]

4. Dealing with the “Human Tax” of Disconnected Operations

[24:17]

• When systems can’t handle exceptions, people become the integration layer, handling reconciliations, workarounds, and redundant tasks ("all that is fatiguing, and that's probably putting it mildly").
• Automation efforts should focus on removing drudgery—not eliminating jobs, but enabling real, value-added work.

"The easy automation was done... What is left is the max low-hanging fruit. ...I'm very much in favor of making your job easier, allowing people to actually focus on building relationships with suppliers." – Yendra Zotek, [24:17]

Theme Emerges:
Dignity and Purpose. A key test for any automation is whether it leaves people with a greater sense of agency and ability to focus on uniquely human differentiators.

5. The Emerging Third Model: AI-Native, Adaptive Operations

[28:26]

• AI/agentic systems now allow companies to “move faster”, leveraging historic data to solve problems dynamically.
• The biggest bottleneck is people’s mindset—willingness to trust new intelligent systems for routine decision-making, freeing up energy for strategic concerns.
• Visibility and controls: key to comfort and risk management is transparency—seeing what agents do and how they decide.

"You don’t have to put the whole large system in place... more experiments is a great thing. It’s very democratizing because anybody in the business can come up with an idea and say, 'this is my problem.'" – Yendra Zotek, [32:52]

6. ROI and Avoiding AI Hype

[34:23]

• ROI should connect directly to real business metrics: revenue, cost, customer satisfaction—measured on outcomes, not vanity or "spreadsheet engineering".
• True operating leverage appears when AI tools have moved past "pilot purgatory" to affecting core financial flows—order-to-cash, inventory, procurement efficiency, chargeback management, etc.

7. Leadership, Alignment, and (Un)Learning

[37:46]

• Cross-functional alignment is essential, especially in an AI-native era.
  – Practical tactics: physically co-locate teams, rotate seating regularly to drive collaboration. – Objectives must be organizational, not siloed; lateral career moves build mutual understanding and trust.

Fun fact: “Once you ingrain people into ‘this is how we are evaluating’, it’s very difficult to change it.” – Reflecting on the COVID-19 need to rapidly shift OKRs, [39:52]

• The only way to scale is to set clear guardrails (what can and can’t be touched), measure everything against business impact, and reward those who take calculated risks.

8. Practical Advice for AI-Ready Operations

[43:33]

• Start where the pain is most acute—segments of work people dislike that are fraught with error, complexity, or exceptions (e.g., invoicing, chargebacks, document ingestion).
• Remove barriers to experimentation; democratize idea submission and pilot testing.
• "Build cross-functional relationships. Find who is smart in your org on AI and make them your friend. It doesn’t have to be IT." – Yendra Zotek, [45:58]
• Leadership’s job: articulate clear, shared business objectives and repeat them ceaselessly; empowerment comes from clarity and trust.

---

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• "Both had minuses. Both you can live with thanks to people, but both can slow you down." — Yendra Zotek [15:33]
• "People are the ones delivering the value, creating the value. Why force change upon them? Let's do it with them, right? In a way that optimizes dignity and purpose." — Scott Lewton [49:26]
• "There's a base layer of this that's quite emotional. It's about dignity and purpose." — Wiley Jones [25:23]
• "Cross-functional coalition starts with cross-pollination... Building coalition is the single most important thing." — Wiley Jones [46:12]
• "There's no shortcut to comprehension. You have to go and talk to people and be like, what's wrong? What's broken. Why is it broken? Still got to go do that." — Wiley Jones [52:25]

---

Key Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|----------------------------------------------------| | 08:29 | Systems vs. People in Performance | | 12:26 | Two Operating Models—Centralized vs. Best-of-Breed | | 20:01 | Company DNA & Tech-Culture Impacts | | 24:17 | The “Human Tax” of Disconnected Operations | | 28:26 | AI-Enabled, Adaptive Operations: A New Model | | 34:23 | Measuring True ROI and Operating Leverage | | 37:46 | Cross-Functional Execution, Alignment & Culture | | 43:33 | Where to Start: Targeting Pain Points for AI | | 45:58 | Advice for Building AI-Ready Teams |

---

Structure for AI-Ready Success: Takeaways

• Value People First: Systems are enablers, but only people can drive true performance and adaptation.
• Make Business Goals Central: Align all technology and process changes to shared, comprehensible business objectives.
• Reduce the Human Tax: Target automation at the most draining, error-prone, or unloved workflows.
• Experiment & Learn Fast: Modern AI-native platforms allow rapid, controlled experimentation with strong, visible guardrails.
• Build Cross-Functional Coalitions: Physically and organizationally mix teams; lateral moves and shared KPIs drive trust.
• Measure What Matters: Insist on ROI linked to “hard” business impacts, not just incremental or cosmetic improvements.
• Culture of Dignity and Purpose: Design and implement change with people, enhancing their roles rather than marginalizing them.

---

For more actionable insights and next steps, connect with Yendra Zotek on LinkedIn—or stop him in Central Park during a morning run!

---

(Compiled by an expert podcast summarizer. For detailed timestamps and direct quotes, see sections above.)

Transcript

[Evergreen Virtual Academy Announcer]

Are you a parent looking for an independent, flexible and tuition free school in Oregon? Evergreen Virtual Academy offers a dynamic and tuition free public education with Oregon certified teachers for PK through 12th grade students. Your student gets a laptop, live class sessions and the ability to chart their own unique path plus in person events and social activities all year. When school has no walls, learning has no limits. Learn more and enroll now. Evergreen Virtual Academy evergreenvirtual.org When the right

[Indeed Sponsored Jobs Announcer]

person joins a team, everything changes. Deadlines tighten, momentum builds. Chaos settles down. That's why hiring Smart Matters Indeed Sponsored Jobs gets you quality candidates when you need them most. Spend less time searching and more time interviewing candidates who check all your boxes with Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Less stress, less time, more results. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire. This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

[Thumbtack Advertiser]

I'm pretty confident talking into a mic. Hey, I'm doing it right now. But home projects? I second guess everything. Is that noise normal? Is that water damage? Who do I even call? That's where thumbtack comes in. Just upload a photo or voice note and it uses AI powered search to match you with the right top rated local pro. So instead of guessing, you get clarity and can hire with confidence for your next home project. Try Try Thumbtack Hire the right Pro today.

[Grainger Advertiser]

Grainger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail. Filters ready to clog H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering and 24. 7 support call. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

[Yendra Zotek]

Systems can hold you back. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. It can be an excuse, but as you can imagine this impatient 24. 5, year old McKinsey consultant who by then I was losing some hair

[Evergreen Virtual Academy Announcer]

that

[Yendra Zotek]

I was told so many times you cannot get data because of our and you name it and you know the big black box ERP system. So that was my first experience with the systems.

[Supply Chain Now Narrator]

Welcome to Supply Chain, now the number one voice of Supply chain. Join us as we share critical news, key insights and real supply chain leadership from across the globe, one conversation at a time.

[Scott Lewton]

Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you may be Scott Lewton and the one and only Wiley Jones here with you on Supply Chain now. Wy, how are you doing? Are you avoiding the heat out here lately?

[Wiley Jones]

Yes. So it's 9am here. I'm sure the sun is right over your head at noon where you're at, but I rolled into the office today and it was, it was breezy, it was wonderful. So man, not experiencing the heat that you're experiencing, that's for sure.

[Scott Lewton]

I'm jealous. I am jealous. But in our guest, I think me and our guests are both experiencing tons of heat as he calls New York City home and we call Atlanta home. But hey, we got a lot of heat getting the show here today, right? We continue a popular new series for 2026, Enterprise Unleashed, powered by W and all of our friends at dos. Now, this outstanding series and yes, I'm partial, but it's been really dialed in on real leadership conversations with individuals that have developed a proven track record for truly unleashing the power of the enterprise, especially in new innovative ways. And today we have yet another, another wonderful conversation teed up with a mover and shaker where we're going to be talking about getting past the ERP trade off and building operations that are truly AI ready. By the way, folks in Wiley, we shared a great blog article here recently, just last weekend as a matter of fact, where we dove into some of the key themes from this big series. So far I think we're five or six episodes in and I love this quote from Wiley here, quote when we talk about technology innovation, we end up talking a lot about how we can work together better as people. So folks, check out that whole read and I can't, I already can't wait, Wiley, to knock out the second half of key takeaways from this series. Are you ready, Wiley, to dive into the show here today? Ready to rock as always. So with all that said, I want to get to work. Welcome in our featured guest here today. Indra Zotec is an industry dynamo, folks. He is a builder, an operator, an investor and a board member. In fact, get this, Yendra has transformed organizations in a variety of ways. As a former McKinsey consultant, he led commercial transformations in automotive, tech and healthcare in Europe, the USA and in China as a C level leader for a variety of organizations including his CIO role at Chobani. He drove tech and supply chain transformation during a turnaround situation. Get this, creating some 50 million, 50 million in value creation. Or hey, check out his role as chief supply chain officer at HelloFresh where he helped to scale that business from 1.6 to 3.5 billion just in North America. And as a board member, advisor and partner for a wide range of organizations, including current board roles with HIVE and Zencargo, amongst others. I tell you what, you're going to see his passion for building teams and driving impact on on full display here today. Let's welcome in Yendra Zotek.

[Yendra Zotek]

Hey.

[Scott Lewton]

Hey Yendra. How are you doing, my friend?

[Yendra Zotek]

I'm great. Hi everyone. Hi Scott. Hi Wiley.

[Scott Lewton]

Great to see you, Wiley. We've been looking forward to this, huh?

[Yendra Zotek]

Oh yeah.

[Wiley Jones]

Yinder and I have had many conversations over the last year and I'm really excited for one of these to make onto the show.

[Scott Lewton]

Hey, me too. And I hear, you know, Wiley's been telling me y you've got this innate ability to unlock codes and puzzles and challenges. So we're going to dive into that here today. But first, Wiley and Yendra Wiley, you know, I'm gonna start with my fun warm up question because I want to get to know Andre a little bit better outside of leadership, innovation, all that good stuff. So Yinger, we've done our homework. You are a big global traveler, almost 80 countries in and out. That's remarkable. You love classical music, you love marathon running, all very competitive there. But what's probably most important to you is your family, your husband, your two boys, very competitive children I believe. So tell us what you did last weekend, Yendra.

[Yendra Zotek]

So great to be here. Thank you. This past weekend, which is two days ago, although it seems ages, was a quiet one. It was quiet because my 8 year old went to his first sleepaway camp. I took him to northern Minnesota to Spanish immersion camp. So me and my husband had the weekend only with our four year old. Wild weekend means I ran two qualification races for New York City marathons on both Saturday and Sunday morning at 8:00am before the. And then we actually marched in New York City Pride on Sunday afternoon. I think it helped build my 4 year old's ego because we were marching the 5th Avenue and everybody was clapping and they thought they are all clapping for him. Well, we had a great time. Thankfully it wasn't too hot. Actually it was a very nice pleasant late June day in New York City.

[Scott Lewton]

Love that Yendra and Wiley, I don't know about you, but that makes me feel what I accomplished last weekend. I feel like a laggard now. Wiley, your thoughts?

[Wiley Jones]

Yeah, let me think about the relative percentage of miles that I traveled by foot over last weekend as a percentage of what Yinder did it, it's you know, 0.001.

[Scott Lewton]

Oh my gosh, wait. I'm with you and I can't wait. Andrew. I can't wait to get into here today. You know me and Wiley been talking about this, this edition and we're so glad you got some time with us. So Andrew, let's do this. You know we touched on, I could have been introducing you for like an hour based on all you've done, but you've operated inside companies with very different views of technology and transformation.

[Thumbtack Advertiser]

Right.

[Scott Lewton]

So I'm curious as we get started here, what experiences most shaped how you think about the relationship especially between systems, people and operating performance?

[Yendra Zotek]

Indra so I have a strong opinion on this as you know and that is that the performational outcome is through an outcome of the inputs and the inputs are people and systems can enable people or they can hold them back bringing it back home to supply chain. I think I shared with you. I grew up on a small farm in the Czech Republic which my family founded in 1300s and I always admired my grandfather's little sheep where he all that he was tracking is how much hay do we have, how much weed do we have, how much food do we have for the pigs and the cows and then how much output comes out. So very simple systems. When I started my career at McKinsey I very quickly realized that systems can hold you back, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. It can be an excuse but as you can imagine this impatient 24, 5 year old McKinsey consultant who by then I was losing some hair

[Indeed Sponsored Jobs Announcer]

that I

[Yendra Zotek]

was told so many times you cannot get data because of our and you name it, any of the big black box ERP system. So that was my first experience with the systems. I also know kind of growing up a little bit Moving on from McKinsey to my first operational role, I was accidental sort of CIO at Chobane. They wanted a business guy to run the IT organization. Chobani grew to one and a half billion plus without an ERP or without a proper erp, what many would call call it. It was thanks to people, right? Despite not having the systems and then hellofresh and we will get to IT in a bit later actually had a large, let's say tech stack of multiple tools in supply chain. But even that wasn't completely sufficient during the pandemic. So I'm a big believer in people. I think systems come next. You need the systems and tools and processes because otherwise you can't scale. But it's very important to introduce the systems and tools at the right times when you actually know what the processes are and your organization is mature somewhat.

[Scott Lewton]

What a great starting point. And Wiley, I know we're going to get into the two operating models in just a second next with you, but how he started that, he and his family started their family farm there in the Czech Republic back in the 1300s. And the individuals and the systems and the straightforward inputs. What a great starting point this conversation. What'd you hear Wiley?

[Wiley Jones]

I, I hear something similar to, you know, similar experience for me where I remember in, in my childhood my dad working for a, a big tier one automotive supplier over the years and spending a lot of time in Japan and you know, in the Detroit areas. Similar things where he was describing hey we, we actually can't run a lot of the manufacturing processes we want to run because the systems that we're using and there were these simple systems on the manufacturing line but then more complex systems as they thought through costing and accounting being able to understand are we making money on the processes that we are introducing. And you know, I'll save the names of which as you know, saying which big black box ERP systems they were using, but there were a combination of swear words coming from my engineering father about enterprise systems back in the 2000s and I don't remember, you know, I didn't remember the time but I was, you know, it's funny, many years later, this is what I'm working on.

[Scott Lewton]

Hey, I bet those are some creative iterations and combinations. All right, so Yendra and Wiley, gosh on your responses there, I can only imagine the stories and what's been passed down from your families and how important that shapes your leadership worldview. But Wiley, I know you and Yendra have talked a lot about two operating models in particular. Where are we going next with Yendra?

[Wiley Jones]

I think that the thing that he has mentioned a number of times and I think is brought up really well here is the, the need to bring in systems at the right time and the way that that's done following the way that the people operate inside of the company, those inputs of people, it ends up looking like two very different company DNAs where you have these suite focused organizations that they want to centralize and they want to standardize based on that. And then you have the technology forward organizations that maybe push into the frontier a bit. They embrace a best of breed approach, they do a lot of integrations, they build a lot of stuff themselves. What are these trade offs? What am I missing about this, how does each model work? Where have you seen them succeed? Where have you seen them break down? Walk me through the kind of the dichotomy there.

[Yendra Zotek]

Yeah, that's indeed similar to how I see the world. Sometimes you have a big black box and as an operator or cio, you have to say, I can do it as long as. And again, you name it, SAP Dynamics, Oracle can do it. And the other times you actually believe that your systems are unique and you want to assemble an ecosystem or tech stack of 15 different tools in supply chain. Ultimately, if you step back, I think both of them have advantages, but both of them have significant pitfalls because what are these systems here for? Ultimately, they are here to make decisions faster so that the business and the people running the business make the right decision. And ultimately you want to make the right decision. Right. And sometimes the reason why you cannot make the right decision is the weakest link. And the biggest thing can be either the system or the person. If I go back to the two archetypes, the black box, traditional erp, it limits you, it slows things down. I'm sure that many of us have heard we cannot do this because first we have this six months ERP project, then we have another six months ERP project and then we have to clean it up. So if you Mr. Supply Chain or Mr. CMO want something to be done, let's talk about the 2028 roadmap. I'm sure that we have seen it many times when it comes to the ecosystem of a variety of different tech tools, which in theory are best of breed and work well together. Well, guess what, somebody has to integrate them. Those integrations fail. While we have this Tech Cycle 15 tool, the 16th tool is being introduced. And again, you are only as good as your weakest link that because somebody in the procurement department, that would be one of your tools. And you can only imagine when I actually lived through Covid during one of the leading e commerce organizations at that time, how much tech depth and tax we had to pay by having 15 or 18 different tech tools. And we have to bring everybody on a call, literally 40 plus people every single day for 9am call for 30 minutes. So both had minuses. Both you can live with thanks to people, but both can slow you down.

[Scott Lewton]

Wiley, I know you got another question for Yendra, but I just want to point out a couple things there. Number one, he's used the phrase thanks to the people twice now. So I already know we're second cousins with Yendra because he's got a deep appreciation for the workforce out there. And then secondly, you know, some of the things he shared in his answer of course, velocity, decision making and focusing and finding out what our weakest links are so we can address them. Wiley, your thoughts?

[Evergreen Virtual Academy Announcer]

Are you a parent looking for an independent, flexible and tuition free school in Oregon? Evergreen Virtual Academy offers a dynamic and tuition free public education with Oregon certified teachers for PK through 12th grade students. Your student gets a laptop, live class sessions and the ability to chart their own unique path. Plus in person events and social activities all year. When school has no walls, learning has no limits. Learn more and enroll now. Evergreen virtual academy evergreenvirtual.org I think so.

[Wiley Jones]

This is so interesting that even across both of these, let's call them extremes, on one hand you have mass fragmentation and decentralization across systems, the other you have mass consolidation, consolidation and centralization. Big monolithic system as you said. CIO says yes, we can do that if it fits into blank. And that fits into blank based on, let's call it the 2030 timeline where we're going to move over to our, you know, single source of truth, something like that. And then on the other hand it's a here, let's add a new tool to solve that specific problem and make sure it's integrated. What I'm so interested in is that it sounds like both of them actually result in the same set of trade offs, which is you're trying to identify how you want to solve a speed and coordination problem with people and you have to decide as an organization do you want to solve it with what you described as this 40 person war room or do you want to solve it with you know how well you can parallelize and systematize waterfall like programs. Walk me through kind of like what are the, what are the gaps between these and how have you seen organizations try to solve the quality of decision making and speed of decision making in these two different regimes? Because it sounds like it's actually the same set of trade offs. At the end of the day it

[Yendra Zotek]

is the same set of trade offs and ultimately you pay, I would call it tax and you can call it coordination tax or people tax for whichever archetype you decide to go for. But if you go for best of breed and in theory all of the data is available at the same time on which you want to make a decision. Some of the data lives only in people's heads, so you need to get them on a call. And I would actually argue that while best of breed can seem attractive, it's Often more expensive because somebody has to integrate the tool. So you are paying that integration tax once through your tax budget, which is often harder than if you go with one black box tool. Secondly, you pay it with the cost of those 40 people who have to be on that call and have to share the best knowledge. When it comes to the black box, honestly, you end up working with a lot of workarounds around the black box. The black box forces you to look at data a certain way because that might not be the most user friendly way of seeing data. You are inefficient. You actually end up doing a lot of shadow IT tools on the side of it because that blog post doesn't meet your needs and that ultimately slows you down and leads to compromises in other ways. So I agree they might seem very different, but ultimately both slow you down and both cost you the ability to make the right decisions faster and enable and again, bring it back to people. Sound a little bit repetitive here, but at the end of the day you want to enable your people to make the right decisions fast and enjoy their jobs and look at the more strategic things which matter.

[Scott Lewton]

Andrew, I love it. All right, and you mentioned you and I think y' all both mentioned the human tax. We're going to dive into that in our next segment. So hold that thought. But secondly, not only blessed are the workforce, but certainly blessed are the integrators, the hardworking integrators that y' all both have referenced numerous times. Yendra, two part question here. So number one, how does, or how much rather does a company's self image shape its systems? And then secondly, what changes when a business sees technology as a strategic capability versus, you know, a back office service? Your thoughts?

[Yendra Zotek]

This is a big question. And look, if we step back from even technology and supply chain, I am a strong believer that each company has its DNA and sometimes it's aligned with a specific function. So there are, and this is unknown, there are some organizations which bring in or grow up great finance people versus HR people versus marketer and there are obviously organizations which bring out and educate and train great IT people. Ultimately I think that if you have people work on one team and I strongly believe in cross functional teams and we can go into details, that to me means people are mixed on the floor together. Id person sits next to marketing person, sit next to customer, experience person, etc. Good things will happen. While it might seem very, I would say attractive to say tech is the kind of differentiator and we are a tech company first and Then, and you name it, apparel company second, etc. There is one risk, and the risk I have seen and I have lived it once, is that if you are in an organization which considers itself a tech and let's say tech and apparel organization, and you put the tech people on a pedestal, you treat them differently, you put them on a higher floor in the office. I've seen a situation where the bins, and I'm talking about the trash bins, you know, from our office spaces. The tech people get $80 trash bins versus the marketing ops and HR people get $20 trash bins to their desk. It leads to really bad culture outcomes. So I'll just pose it more.

[Scott Lewton]

I like it, Yendra. All right, Wiley, we're about to move into human tax, but I know you're ready. You probably have a five minute response on what Yendra just shared. But give me like the Reader's Digest response to what he shared there.

[Yendra Zotek]

Wally.

[Wiley Jones]

It's a follow up question, very simple. How does that manifest in the way that they approach building their systems around them? And it's what you said, the inputs are the people. You know, an organization says we're an apparel company second, but a tech company first. It sounds like they probably build their systems and they build their organization differently as a result. How do you see that go?

[Yendra Zotek]

That's right. And the only way to avoid that is that you have leaders who message to the whole organization at the same time with one voice, one set of goals and one set of metrics. Immediately when you move into these are the metrics that matter for the marketing organization versus supply chain versus it. You end up people kind of looking for the local minimums, looking for things which make a difference in it. I'm going to build a system which has the highest uptime, most secure, that might not end up being the most usable system and vice versa. Marketing cares about creativity, but maybe less attribution, which would allow us to measure cost of acquiring customers. It has to start at the top, right? So the leader has to message to the whole organization. The whole organization has three goals, three objectives. They are not marketing objectives, not IP objectives. They are business objectives.

[Scott Lewton]

You know, we're after enterprise success, not fiefdom success. I think Indra and Wiley, good stuff there. All right, so I got to get into this human tax of disconnected operations. I feel this in our bones. And one of my favorite things we've talked about on, you know, for years now is how we can eliminate that human tax because it's very real, you know, when systems cannot handle exceptions, people become that integration layer. Both y' all have kind of referenced that already. Tasks such as checking deductions, confirming EDI transactions, chasing approvals, solving workarounds, all that is fatiguing, and that's probably putting it mildly, right? Creates tons of friction. So, Yendra, how should leaders distinguish between automating jobs and removing work that prevents people from doing their real jobs?

[Yendra Zotek]

So the easy automation was done right. So the RPAs and other tools are already existing. And if we are looking forward, I would say whatever was easy to automate is done. And we have to look at what is the max low hanging fro a B. I would also say if you say that you want to automate a job and there is some resistance in the organization, you will never succeed because somebody can always make an argument. You automated only 95 or 97% of my job, hence I still need to be here because this specific part of my job has not been automated. So. So I'm very much in favor of the second, making your job easier, allowing people to actually focus on building the relationship with their suppliers, building relationships with the companies that make sure that inbound trucks and outbound trucks depart on time. It's much easier proposition as opposed to fighting. Has your job been automated 80% of your time, 90% of your time, or 95% of your time?

[Scott Lewton]

All right, Wiley, where does that take your mind and what's your next question for Yendra?

[Wiley Jones]

I. I'm thinking about a literal conversation I had this morning related to this with some, with some customers. So I'm like, my brain is rewiring some stuff. No, I think the thing that he described that's so interesting is there's kind of like a base layer of this that's quite emotional. And a bit of it seems like it's about dignity and purpose. And the thing that connects up to is the distinction between efficiency and leverage. And what it sounds like to me is that Yinder is describing leverage, which is how you give people the ability to do more with what they have, as opposed to saying, we're going to take responsibilities away from you, we're going to automate your job. Instead, it's, we're going to remove the pain, stress, and frustration so that you can ladder up what you do more clearly and with higher impact to those business objectives. You were describing, what are the consequences of this? You know, of. When we're, we're in the work, you know, what are the consequences of this? When we don't get this right? And then what happens when we do get it right? You know, in the world of revenue inventory cost. Walk me through that.

[Yendra Zotek]

That's absolutely right. The consequence if you are focused on automation is that when you actually deploy the new system, the employees will push back and they will say, you Mr. Change Management IT or SI. Whoever did that do not know that 3% of my job is to manually look. Whenever on the replenishment side of the aisle, some bag runs out, I have to go to the store. And you forgot about that, hence you did not do your job well. If you switch and say I'm going to enable you so that you can do the quality controls and you can check, I don't know if it was garlic in my distribution centers or something else. And I'm actually allowing you to do that other job better, which only you can do, hence we can serve our customers better. It's much easier enablement conversation. You actually allow people to focus on what they are better and what robots truly can do. Truly can do. And you actually even like and some of the lowest hourly jobs, you signal job security because you are saying you will not hear removed because I don't need you for this task, which I cannot automate away with robots, agentic solutions, etc. It's very. I actually like how you call it by it. It's a lot about dignity, right. And telling them there is a space for you long term, I'm actually just helping you do your job better and giving you additional tools. In the past might have been ERPs, it might have been some RPAs. Now it's new hiding tools, which to me is just a new tool at everybody's disposal.

[Scott Lewton]

All right, really quick, Wiley, I know you got, you got the next question with Andrew here, but I love that he picked up on your phrase earlier dignity and purpose. I love that. I love us just thinking about that and using it as a central theme in today's conversation. Especially a lot of change and transformation. All right, so Wiley, where are we going next? Or maybe a third model, huh?

[Wiley Jones]

I think that's kind of where. And Indra's been hinting at this, which is we've been talking a lot about the way that things have been historically and these new layers of automation that are now possible and this kind of leverage that we can create. We have this ERP monolith, this black box model that we've described, or it's a big suite. Then you have the fragmented best of breed stack. What does this new paradigm look like that's been emerging as companies are recognizing that agentic systems and modern, modern, modern platforms have capabilities that have never been possible before. Especially as it comes to that last mile of capabilities. You know, the, the, the lower hanging fruit is getting less low I guess is one thing, say thing thinking about it. What are you, what are you seeing in practice here?

[Yendra Zotek]

I'm seeing companies which can move faster and where they don't have to solve 100% because the agent systems can learn. Right. And like I will connect it with that anecdote I mentioned. You don't need to solve on day one, 95% of the problem because the agents can figure out when you give them a problem which they have not encountered, how to use the historical information to move forward. So I think we have this unique time where you don't have to be bogged down by the system. You're actually bogged down by people willing to take risks and start building and trusting that decisions only they can make on their factory floors. When the purchasing organization. But I see something like a true enablement. But as long as you make the mindset shift that yes you can put some controls in place, but you can trust your agent, the coworker or system or platform to leverage your past decisions. Because at the end of 10, it's based on historical decisions which you and your team have made. You can move faster and you can just assign work and you can come back after dinner or next day in the morning and the work is done. And again, it allows people to focus on the more strategic and truly relationship based part of their jobs which are actually more fulfilling as well.

[Wiley Jones]

That is. Okay, so you mentioned two parts which I want to unpack because this is getting really tactical and that's extremely useful, especially as we think about the, you know, the broader mission of the show Enterprise Unleashed, giving leaders tactics that they can use and translate into their organizations. You said two things, the speed and the controls around risk and how that unlocks our ability to run small experiments and move quickly. It sounds like there's a risk of number one, creating fragmentation. How do we avoid that? And then number two, how do you actually set up the controls so that you can let someone go and say, hey, go run this historical procurement workflow that I've done a bunch of times. Go figure it out. I'm going to go have dinner with my family and I'll be back in the morning instead of staying late tonight. What does it look like in practice for organizations to get to a place where they can actually deliver that and then how are they translating that into a mindset that the organization can adopt company wide.

[Yendra Zotek]

Yep. So in terms of practice and controls, I think the best tool is to give people visibility as to what their agent is doing. Right. And again, like as you compare it to the black box, you actually don't know what's happening. It's input and output and there are a bunch of steps in between. Suddenly you can actually observe if you want to, you ask the agent to give you maximum flex, maximum visibility as to how it's making decisions. And what I mean by that, how it's saying I need to change the forecast, I need to order additional volume. And this is how I decide am I going to order the extra digits or whatever might be from supplier number one versus from supplier number two. So that's in terms of controls, what was the first part of the question?

[Wiley Jones]

First part was then setting that up so that you can have smaller experiments run more quickly through these small experiments in kind of a bounded controlled environment. And then not risking creating fragmentation as you go through this process.

[Yendra Zotek]

I think that you now have the whole advantage that you don't have to put the whole large system in place. So it's actually more towards more experiments.

[Scott Lewton]

More experiments is a great thing. Right. It's funny, while you and I both know the one and only Marty Parker, right. We're on an interview the other day. Yendra, this is a former C level executive industry and he was reminiscing about years and years ago they would run two simulations a year, right. And wait for the results. Months and months later we're in a different place.

[Yendra Zotek]

I was gonna say, like it's very democratizing because anybody in the business can come up with an idea and say, this is my problem we cannot solve. And it could be bottlenecked. At a certain time of the day when it's about CX Auto lies in it, there is this long tail of exceptions. And it could be something about document ingestion or filling out manual purchase order or making sure that some incomplete orders don't end up in a black box because they are missing some part of the API component. It's very enabling and anybody can come up with that idea. And it's very easy to test it the next day. You don't have to like do the full requirement gathering, then give it to somebody, then do unit testing. But literally within a couple of days and this is where the barrier has been removed, you can start testing it and see if it adds value.

[Scott Lewton]

And of course, Wiley, that adds to the, the big main major common theme of culture that we have touched on every single episode. Because I want that democratization effect that Yendra references that pulls that alignment. It pulls people together, shows how they, they can make an impact on the organization. So Yendra, where should two part question. I love my two two part questions evidently. So where should an operator expect to see hard ROI first? And then secondly, what would you convince or what would convince you rather that a company is truly creating real operating leverage rather than running yet another AI pilot? Your thoughts?

[Yendra Zotek]

Andre, I think that you have to stay honest with what are the metrics and KPIs that move your organization. Right. And it would be, it doesn't have to be immediately. I mean ideally it's revenue or cost, but you can look at customer engagement and customer satisfaction, but pick something that isn't there. Just like this is the specific experiment and this is how I will measure it. But connected to order to cash, revenue collection, managing chargebacks and deductions better or vice versa. If you are looking at the cost side, making sure that you are actually optimizing your procurement process better, improving your forecasting so that you can order digits even from the supplier, which is, I don't know, half a day or one day extra further away. So for me, down to the heart metrics, which by the way should be the same as metrics we used yesterday and observing them and making sure that you can impact them through AI.

[Scott Lewton]

Love that. And you know, one of the things I heard there, Wiley, before you take the next question with Yendra, is make sure our metrics are rooted in reality and how that business actually runs rather than fairytale land where we're listing all these metrics that just isn't connected to how we run the business or want to run the business. That's what I heard. Wiley, what else did you hear? And let's roll into our next leadership topic too.

[Wiley Jones]

Yeah, what you're describing, Scott, I refer to as spreadsheet engineering. You can make the spreadsheets say whatever you want at the end of the day, but you go look at it in practice on the floor, go ask your customers, it's hard to get those numbers to lie.

[Yendra Zotek]

Yeah.

[Wiley Jones]

What's interesting to me is tying this back to what you said, what's quite interesting is that there is an ability to take what Inder was describing about looking at historical performance, looking at the things that AI, workflows, agents, whatever you call it, are actually producing and then being able to produce a very clear counterfactual. If we hadn't run this forecast, this way as the agent made the suggestions and changes and drove our organization against. How do we think this would have gone? Oh, how much money do we think we would have spent with this vendor if we hadn't negotiated the prices down using this agentic workflow? I think that a really important part of this is these organizations starting to look at themselves as producing data sets that allow them to basically measure a counterfactual and validate ROI in practice and not just again on spreadsheets that they. They can conjure up. So and it's the one thing I've seen quite often and I think is a really powerful tactic that comes out of this and you hit on directly through this conversation. Jumping into kind of the next section though on this is back to a point he made earlier was around cross functional execution downstream of leadership alignment.

[Supply Chain Now Narrator]

Yeah.

[Wiley Jones]

How do you get in practice, you know, finance operations. It. These are, these are not. These are not the organizations in the company that are going to that love hanging out with each other actor work for beers always right now in some companies. But what does the effective co building look like across these organizations when as we described these metrics are so intertwined? The experiences for the end customer and even the end users of these systems inside the organization are so intertwined. How does co building work in this AI native era?

[Yendra Zotek]

You make the people. It actually works the same day even before the AI uploading area. You make them sit together. I'm a big believer in switching where people sit on a regular basis. There is actually a lot of research now done into this by Oxford professor Hanut Mikes, who's actually my former teacher at LSE and also once my boss. And if you move people around, make sure that they have a different neighbor every three to six months, good stuff happens. They are more likely to collaborate better. You also need to make sure and this goes back to having one set of goals and one set of metrics, which are organizational metrics. So doing it in a very okrish way and making sure that whether it's on annual or quarterly basis, people know what their objectives are and you define it and you make it part of everybody's. Everybody's annual objectives for their success criteria. That makes a huge difference by the way. I'll give you a fun fact. It's also once you ingrain people into this is how we are evaluating. This is how we have to succeed. It's very difficult to change it. And I'm learning. So one of the for me very difficult exercises at the start of COVID so Let's call it like late March or early April was to tell people that the OKRs we put in place which when do A, B, C, D are suddenly not valid. I I need you to do something completely different. Simplified product, no additional innovation, ship the product faster. It took us like three or four times to message that message before people realized oh, I will not be evaluated by how much innovation I did, but actually did I get the food to people who cannot go or do not want to go to supermarkets. But it's all about communication. Common KPIs across teams. Also people especially in early stages of their career, moving laterally. So moving from being a finance person to being a procurement analyst and then maybe having a stint in IT that creates those strong cross functional relationships.

[Scott Lewton]

Yendra, on the first part of your response there you're talking about how difficult it is to unlearn things. And I saw a great keynote a year or two ago on leaning into recognizing the challenge but strengthening your ability, especially in this area era of constant change to unlearn and release from the older way of doing things and then to the on the newer, modern, innovative way. All right, One of the major things this conversation so far has been, you know, creating that alignment and creating that alignment where folks can move fast while maintaining control and the, the T word, the imperative T word of trust and accountability. So I want to play on that major theme thus far, Indra, how can leaders what do? What do middle managers and individual contributors need from leadership in order to make all of that happen? So number one, we can not only apply the right technology tools to the right problems, but also get out of what a lot of folks are talking about, you know, that pilot purgatory and scaling the solutions across enterprise. Your thoughts?

[Yendra Zotek]

I think you need maintenance and governance around what and this goes back to an earlier question as well. What are the guardrails like? If everybody can come up with an idea, what can you touch, what you can't touch, what you should be afraid of. How do we actually monitor the success of a specific agent project or building a full platform? So I think once you say this is where we are heading and this goes back to goal and mission and the specific metrics, once you define the guardrails where you have to operate, it's actually extremely freeing and satisfying when you then see a senior associate or manager come up with an idea and says I want to do this, I'm asking for budget X. This is going to be the criteria I want to be measured on. And I've seen one or two cases where, where the person actually six or nine months later is running all of AI across the whole business. So there are many kind of. Again, if you step back, there are some businesses which are waiting for their chief AI officer and they are still waiting six months later, nine months later, one year later. The organizations I have seen successful in today's age is where the director of operations or director of CX says we are growing 3x. I will not be allowed or able to hire three times as many people. And I think I can probably only achieve 20% efficiencies without AI. Let me try experimenting. That person who is not afraid, who agrees on hey, this is what I want to impact, also knows that a mistake will happen, right? There might be a specific type of ticket and you can again control for it. You can say if it's anything health related or if it's anything in a different industry, like another like important event related, let's stop it. Let's pass it to a human agent. Once you establish those guardrails, you can run and then you just measure.

[Scott Lewton]

I like it. I'm gonna pose this next question to both of y'.

[Yendra Zotek]

All.

[Scott Lewton]

That's right. Wiley, I'm posing to you as well. Here it goes. Hope you can keep up with Yendra. I think you can, y'.

[Thumbtack Advertiser]

All.

[Scott Lewton]

Two, two of the smartest folks I think I've ever met. You know those leaders out there, there's practitioners out there that are tuned in, they really want to change.

[Wiley Jones]

They're.

[Scott Lewton]

They're in the trenches trying hard to lean into this modern golden era of supply chain tech. So for any of those companies, starting now, what is one workflow or one class of exception, I'll call it, that you would target in the first 90 days and Yenzer, you go first.

[Yendra Zotek]

I would pick something that people hate, where mistakes happen and what gets often referred to as one of the least popular part of the organization where if you get stuck back there, you don't get promoted. And that could be invoicing, it could be something around document ingestion, it could be manual processing of chargebacks. But pick something where ideally you have a large number of employees. So we are not talking about one or two person team and making 10% more efficient, but pick something that's not sexy.

[Scott Lewton]

Yes, I like that. And while he's picking something that people hate, picking something that makes people stay at home or stay at the office and miss dinner at home. Wiley, your thoughts?

[Wiley Jones]

Yeah, I mean that's back to the. I think the thing I was describing earlier around the dignity and purpose. Dignity, purpose, pain, removing pain. Those are really powerful to go look for that in your organizations. I think there's another reference frame to steal a lot of what Indra's been describing which is what are those business objectives? Let's say you have three. As a company we need to grow X percent over the next two years. We need to go into new markets, new Geos, launch new products. We need to get sharper and have a tighter cost basis on these core evergreen product lines. What are the work streams that ladder up to those in those work streams that ladder up to those where has, where have we had a hard time with the last mile delivery of a solution because of the complexity of the possible edge cases that can emerge? That is where agents are absolutely out of this world. Amazing. Go in and find those places where you are stuck trying to get work streams that ladder up to your business objectives across the finish line and experiment with workflow automation. That's going to give people leverage to be able to then close out those items and then drive towards those objectives. I think that's the kind of the top down version of what we were describing earlier of bottoms up is go find the pain. Top down is what are the business objectives and why can't we hit them

[Yendra Zotek]

100% agree where you have exceptions which previous kind of rounds of automation could not go after hence you kind of let them be and it creates pain downstream. Those are the best candidates as well.

[Scott Lewton]

Andrew, what is your advice to those operators out there trying really hard day in and day out to build truly AI ready operations Today I'm going to go back to the well here. Your thoughts?

[Yendra Zotek]

Build cross functional relationships. Find who is smart in your ORCON AI and make them your friend. It doesn't have to be it.

[Scott Lewton]

I like that Wiley respond to that really quick.

[Wiley Jones]

Yeah, cross functional relationships. Building a cross functional coalition starts with cross pollination. As simple as what Yinder describing around moving people around and getting people to share their perspectives and them realizing oh wait we all have the same problems and if we actually try this new thing to address them the business will be better for it. Building coalition is the single most important thing that individual contributors and and managers can be doing today. And leaders being able to empower and enable those coalitions through top down clarity of business objectives like that is the job of leadership in my mind today. Make those business objectives clear and repeat them until you're blue in the face.

[Scott Lewton]

I like it. Indra. They've got to make sure first off we got to go through your agent and get you booked for a repeat appearance here on Supply Chain. Now, I really.

[Indeed Sponsored Jobs Announcer]

We.

[Scott Lewton]

I wish we had a couple more hours with you, but I want to make sure folks know how to connect with you and follow all your incredible work, really, across industry. What's the easiest way that folks can connect with you? Indra?

[Yendra Zotek]

Ping me on LinkedIn or stop me in Central park when I'm running.

[Thumbtack Advertiser]

Okay.

[Scott Lewton]

You don't really want to get stopped in Central park as you're. You got your cadence going, do you? If it was me, if it's me, I'm not sure if I can get going again. All right, so, Yendra Ztech again, a pleasure to learn from you here today. We gotta bring you back. I love how you started the conversation not only with your family, but the family farm in the Czech Republic and the lessons learned, you know, hundreds of years ago that are still really robustly relevant here today. So thanks so much for being here, Yendra.

[Yendra Zotek]

Great to be here.

[Scott Lewton]

Thank you, Scott and Ly, we'll see you soon. Oh, w. That was a great one. We got a lot of golden nuggets from Indra here today. As promised. I'm still processing some of the. Some of what he shared. What are a couple of your favorite key takeaways from today's conversation?

[Wiley Jones]

People and the organizations that are made up of these people need to have clarity from leaders in the company about how the business objectives should drive down into tactical decisions on how systems and technology work. ERP being an example of one of the systems of the past and how this fragmentation of, you know, the tech stacks in one we know, one paradigm, the monolithic systems in another paradigm, those were all just tools to then ladder up to business objectives. The next section of this, this next journey that we're going on is we now have new tools that are going to allow us to challenge the ways that we've done this in the past. And leaders still have the same job, which is create clarity about business objectives and create rules of engagement and a tactical control for the organization to operate technology to then meet business objectives. The pro. You said this. The strategies and the execution of this is exactly the same as it was in the past. We just have new tools to do it with now.

[Scott Lewton]

I like it. I like it. You know, and I want to double click on something both. Both of y' all focus so much on the wonderful people. Right? Thanks to the people. That was a big theme. And, you know, when we're driving change, we got to keep that in mind as Leaders. Hey, the people are the ones delivering the value, creating the value. Why force change upon them? Let's do it with them, right? In a way that optimizes that phrase. You said. I loved it. Dignity and purpose. If we only thought about dignity and purpose front and center more often, that'd be. It'd be a better world. All right, Wally, I've got two questions for you. You okay if we go over about a minute or two? Wiley?

[Wiley Jones]

Yeah, of course.

[Scott Lewton]

All right, so I've got a key question for you and folks, before I share that, when August 11th, 12 noon Eastern Time. We've got a superstar joining us, a sub big superstar. We can't even mention who that is yet. 12 noon, August 11 for the next episode of Enterprise Unleashed. Now, Wiley, what are you seeing customers there, Your dos, all your wonderful customers at DOS do differently when they design workflows and validate operating processes earlier, you know, where are we and where are we going? Your observations, Wow.

[Wiley Jones]

I think a lot of this ends up looking like a combination of the way that waterfall systems worked in the past and the way that large implementation projects have worked in the past, where you still do a lot of the discovery. You go out into the organization, you talk to the subject matter experts, you go figure out what we need to accomplish as a business. Where is that pain? Where? What? Oh, this three way match process that accounts payable and inventory receiving teams hate. Let's go fix that. You still have to go do all that work. The thing that's different is, is that that last mile of exceptions, the places where you have 50 edge cases, you can collapse the complexity of that. Now because you have near human intelligence capabilities of these agentic systems, you don't have to manually hard code in every single, well, if it's this situation, do this. If it's that situation, do this. Instead. It's hey, here is our framework. Agents and you know, AI systems can now say, using this framework, I will make good decisions and when it reaches the specific edge case, I will then escalate it to a human. And you can, you can take all of the energy of defining the possible things that could go wrong and collapse it into a framework of rules instead of forcing every single thing to be delineated and dictated line by line. That is the thing that we're seeing the complexity collapse around and it allows implementations to run faster. But you still have to go to understand the systems. There is no shortcut to comprehension. You have to go and talk to people and be like, what's wrong? What's broken. Why is it broken? Still got to go do that.

[Scott Lewton]

There's no shortcut to comprehension. That's bad news for some folks out there. But hey, but the good news WY is we have created tons of, I'll call them shortcuts, but better ways for sure. That is saving plenty and plenty of time and paving a much better way, much better path for industry and it's highly valuable and appreciated workforce as we move into what's next. So wy, really quick, I know I want to invite folks we don't talk about DOS enough on these shows. I really want to invite folks to come check out dos, the AI native operations cloud for the physical economy. Connecting the flow of goods, dollars and data. The platform serves as the operational core around a company's existing general ledger, managing inventory, orders, procurement, fulfillment, all in a single system, all with real time visibility, automated workflows and adaptive operations. You can learn more and take even take a demo. Ask the tough questions dos.com check it out wy you, you feed, I think you get up in the morning, jump out of bed to take on the toughest questions out there. Is that right? WY that's what I picture.

[Wiley Jones]

I love the hard questions. I think that's, I think that's also maybe the thing that Yinder was partially touching on, that was a fun piece of this is that leaders should be the one to take on this ambiguity and the hard questions. And so that's, that's my favorite part of my day.

[Scott Lewton]

I'm with you. I'm with you. And man, Yendra was a great guest. I want to thanks give a big thanks to Yendra Zek Zotek for show joining us here today. Sharon has been there, done that perspective. We're going to have to have Yendra back soon. Big thanks. Also of course the the one only Wiley Jones and the hard hitting DOS team that's on the move. Wiley, big things at dos. We didn't get a chance to kind of unpack some of the the big news but y' all keep, y' all keep growing and succeeding and tackling and answering those tough questions day by day, huh?

[Wiley Jones]

It is a fun challenge. Every day there's a new one. Is it the the pros and cons of that is that there are new problems to solve and new new hard questions to answer every day.

[Scott Lewton]

That's right. To all, all of you out there, thank you so much for being here. Big thanks to Amanda Trisha behind the scenes helping make production happen and tip it out to Sean as well Most of all, big thanks to our SCN Global Fam for being here with us. Folks. Your homework. You know the homework number one. I hope you enjoyed conversations much as I have. You might have to go back. Give it a second. Listen, like I know I'll have to, but take one thing. Wiley and Yendra offered a ton of actionable perspective here today, right in some very that you can utilize in some very difficult, highly change field times. Take one thing, do something with it. Share with your team. Deeds, not words. That's how we're going to continue to drive transformation for our people and our industry. And with that said, Scott Luden on behalf of Supply Chain now team, challenging you do good, get forward. Be the change that's needed. Dignity and purpose, folks. Let's keep that top of mind and we'll see you next time right back here on Supply Chain Now. Thanks everybody.

[Supply Chain Now Narrator]

Join the Supply Chain now community. For more Supply chain perspectives, news and innovation, check out supplychain now.com, subscribe to supply chain now on YouTube and follow and listen to Supply Chain now wherever you get your podcasts.