How will AI impact the future of supply chain? We turned to Resilinc’s Chief Technology Officer, Mark Vo, to find out.
Resilinc has been a technology-forward company since its inception in 2010. In 2024, technology like AI is now more critical than ever in the world of supply chain risk management and in the business world. In fact, in the 2024 Gartner® AI Use-Case Comparison for Sourcing and Procurement report, Gartner® “identifies some of the most prominent AI use cases across sourcing and procurement functions.”
“AI in supplier risk management delivers significant business value by providing early risk detection, leveraging predictive analytics, enabling continuous monitoring, automating data aggregation, customizing risk scoring, detecting fraud, enhancing supply chain resilience, ensuring compliance, automating alerts, facilitating performance benchmarking, offering strategic insights for negotiations and reducing manual workload,” says Gartner®.
To get insights into what the future holds, we sat down with Resilinc’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Mark Vo, who joined Resilinc in September 2023. Mark Vo has a successful 24-year career as a technology leader and has consistently built high-performing engineering organizations at the forefront of technology. As CTO, Mark is eager to drive Resilinc’s technology strategy and roadmap, ushering in the next growth phase as the industry’s leading platform for supply chain monitoring, mapping, and resiliency solutions.
Resilinc: You’ve been at Resilinc for six months now. What is most exciting about being the Chief Technology Officer at Resilinc?
Mark: To be honest, it’s the company’s mission to make the supply chain for all customers around the world more resilient. It’s a game-changer. A lot of people don’t realize that everything they touch—from products, to food, to the car they drive—has a supply chain behind it. On top of that, we have a wonderful company culture. It’s a dream come true to be a part of a company that is on a growth trajectory. I’m excited to be a part of a company that is at the forefront of improving supply chain.
Resilinc: What are technology must-haves for companies who want to supercharge their risk management program?
Mark: They have to have a tool like Resilinc that not only provides disruption detection but also enables them to take action when supply chain disruptions occur. Being able to act on a disruption that has potential risks to the supply chain (as quickly as possible) is critical for a lot of companies. Beyond our tools, partnering with a company like Resilinc is beneficial because we are continuously investing in innovation to further our product—specifically around AI. We extract meaningful insights out of massive amounts of data so that they can be actionable and valuable to our customers. We harness the power of data to help our customers solve their supply chain problems.
Resilinc: Why is technology so integral to supply chain risk management?
Mark: We live in a very dynamic world today. Companies are trying to track everything from climate change, geopolitical situations, economics, labor strikes, hurricanes, etc. To track all these things, try to synthesize the data, and understand how it impacts a company—it’s completely daunting. Thankfully, Resilinc’s technology is great at recognizing patterns and proactively getting meaningful insights to customers and their businesses. That’s how our technology directly helps clients with their supply chain risk management.
Internally at Resilinc, technology enables our team to improve our own products and operations. For example, streamlining repetitive tasks, mundane tasks that require a lot of repetition so that our people can actually focus on the more complex problems. The means customers not only get a better product, but they’re getting a better team that is more responsive and agile. Technology is ingrained in Resilinc. It is not just something that we do as a side hobby.
Resilinc: How is Resilinc using AI to predict supply chain events?
Mark: We’re using the latest AI technologies for predictive analysis of our data. Without AI, this data would require thousands and thousands of human hours to analyze. Instead, we train AI models to be able to recognize the things that matter to our customers and the specific use cases that could impact their business. The goal is to get the information that will be most useful for our customers so that they can proactively minimize the risk to their business. Speed is a crucial component as well. The more lead time Resilinc can provide to customers, the greater the chance that the customers can mitigate the risk.
Resilinc: What does the future of generative AI for supply chain risk management look like at Resilinc?
Mark: We’re already incorporating generative AI into our roadmap. We have products that will be coming out, and we’re looking at ways to improve our data operations, which will allow us to provide better service for our customers. For example, we’re going to build a lot more self-service tools that will allow our customers to create their own reports and look at their data in a way that is more helpful for them.
Our approach to AI is not asking, ‘What problems can AI solve?’ Instead, we are asking ourselves, ‘What are the existing problems, and does AI fit into the solution?’ A lot of vendors do the opposite. They start with Gen AI and create problems it can fix. At Resilinc, if AI can actually address these problems, that’s great. If it can’t, we look at what other technologies can help make these improvements.
Resilinc: Technology is constantly changing, growing, and getting better. What does leading an adaptable engineering team that can pivot quickly take?
Mark: The way I approach new technologies and engineering is at the core of what we do. A strong, reliable platform for engineers to be able to build and support our products is number one. On top of that, I create processes that allow the team to fail fast so that they can learn from it and move forward.
That’s the reason why we’ve incorporated an agile development process. The faster that we fail and learn from mistakes—the faster we grow. Doing this gives the greatest flexibility to our business operations and allows us to pivot when the business needs us to. There are constantly new technologies, and our customers will always have unique problems. Being able to iterate quickly gives engineering the best support for our business to be agile and flexible to meet the various needs of our business and our customers.
Resilinc: What are the benefits of using Resilinc’s technology versus trying to build a solution in-house?
Mark: Resilinc is an enterprise platform. It provides an end-to-end solution with people, processes, and technology. Customers are buying a complete solution, but they can also customize that solution to fit their business model. If a customer tries to create their own SCRM platform, they’ll need the people on the business side. They’ll need engineers. They’ll need the cloud infrastructure. They’ll have to build their own Resilinc, essentially.
Resilinc has been in the business for over a decade. We have a rich data set, a sophisticated product, and we have employees that really understand supply chain—which all makes Resilinc invaluable. Companies that work with Resilinc are able to tap into our services and our wealth of data from day one.
Resilinc: Is there anything else on your mind for the supply chain going into 2024?
Mark: Supply chain risk management is increasingly more and more important with every passing year. Whether it’s climate change, geopolitics, strikes, or whatever event could potentially impact the supply chain, these disruptive events are increasing because of the world we live in today. Companies that use solutions like Resilinc, will greatly benefit and minimize risks to their supply chains and their customers.
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Learn how you can customize Resilinc’s AI-powered supply chain risk management solutions to fit your business. Schedule a demo today to elevate your supply chain risk and resiliency program.
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