IBM announced a collaboration agreement with SAP to develop solutions for helping consumer packaged goods (CPG) and retail industry clients enhance their supply chain, finance operations, sales and services using generative AI.
With a shared legacy of technology expertise and the completed work of embedding the IBM watsonx enterprise-ready AI and data platform and AI assistants into SAP solutions, the companies are working to create new generative and traditional AI solutions to address complex, direct-store delivery business processes and product portfolio management. IBM Consulting and SAP are already working with CPG clients worldwide to gather detailed requirements to create secured and scalable AI solutions that can be integrated with the SAP Direct Distribution solution.
The goal is to help CPG companies, wholesale distributors and retailers more efficiently manage store-level assortments, improve product distribution and drive incremental revenue by:
- Enhancing transportation planning and execution.
- Optimizing store-level assortments.
- Automating order settlement.
“Global and regional consumer industry organizations must manage various commerce applications and need advanced insights to provide proactive recommendations that help improve operations and meet customer expectations,” said Luq Niazi, Global Managing Partner, Industries and Global Consumer Industry, IBM Consulting. “With SAP, we are looking to build on the long-standing work of incorporating AI into SAP solutions that can help enterprise clients achieve further business value.”
IBM Consulting plans to build the solutions on SAP’s Business Technology Platform (BTP), and will integrate watsonx through APIs. Warehouse planners, frontline delivery associates and client representatives can have an enriched user experience by using watsonx Assistant to create chatbots using IBM’s conversational search capabilities.
“At SAP, we look forward to collaborating with IBM on this important initiative to help consumer goods companies transform their operations and improve their bottom line,” said EJ Kenney, SVP Consumer Products Industry and Life Sciences Business Unit at SAP. “We understand the complexities that come with managing direct store delivery and by leveraging the power of AI we aim to help our customers better manage their last mile distribution more effectively, minimize waste, improve customer satisfaction and achieve business value in today’s fast-paced consumer industry.”
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