INSIGHT 2024: AI Takes Center Stage in Shaping the Future of Supply Chain Management

The 16th INSIGHT conference, our exclusive event for BlueCherry and Visual Next customers, happened on September 16^th and 17^th. Clients were eager and leaned in for an action-packed two days of learning and connecting. More than 200 brand, retailer and manufacturer clients joined us for conversations about innovations in supply chain management technology that support visibility, intelligence, efficiency, and growth and how the BlueCherry Supply Chain Platform enables those benefits.                                       

From panel discussions with industry CEOs on the most pressing issues facing the fashion industry to demonstrations of our product roadmap and platform updates, a central focus of this years’ conference was the transformative potential of AI in the fashion industry.

To set the stage around AI, Joe Parrish, chief creative officer of marketing firm The Variable, delivered a riveting keynote on the power of AI. Joe played the role of futurist (How is AI likely to affect work and humanity?) and coach (How can I benefit from AI right now, and how do I keep up?). He explored tools and prompting methods that can be used in the fashion and apparel industries and shared practical ways to use tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity for tasks such as identifying color trends and predicting logistics costs.

A few key takeaways:

• As brands continue to explore AI, they should embrace its ability to positively augment work and outputs
• Cultivating a sense of curiosity on ways to implement AI in daily workflows is important to further unlocking its potential   
• In the apparel and footwear industries in particular, AI can be used in countless ways, from identifying color trends to uncovering new product launch ideas 
• Overall, we should view AI as a thought partner in our work

As AI continues to enhance efficiency and drive growth across countless industries, we at BlueCherry have embraced its potential to make our solutions even more powerful.

So, how and where is AI being integrated into BlueCherry? We walked through the capabilities of BlueCherry Planning AI to automate and transform workflow, from forecasting to demand planning, lifecycle planning, inventory planning, production recommendations, and ultimately enterprise resource planning (ERP) at-large. 

BlueCherry Planning AI combines decades of BlueCherry's apparel expertise with our partner FirstShift's AI innovation to automate and optimize end-to-end supply chain management. With natural language queries and AI-driven demand sensing, we showed how clients can make faster, more informed decisions that reduce inefficiencies and enhance customer service.  

With features including AI-powered global search and integrated Microsoft Co-Pilot, our enhanced BlueCherry platform enables clients to issue queries in natural language. This can include identifying top-selling products, analyzing complex financial data, and much more – all with near-instant results. It also assists in onboarding new users onto the platform and even helps experienced users navigate the solution more efficiently.

With the ability to share information across teams and easily generate detailed reports, BlueCherry is redefining what’s possible in fashion and apparel management technology. We can’t wait to see how this will help our customers boost top-line growth, improve bottom-line profitability, and achieve operational excellence.

One thing became abundantly clear at Insight 2024: the way we’ve integrated AI technology into our supply chain management solutions is transforming the way BlueCherry operates today and setting the stage for an even more powerful future. As AI evolves, we want to reassure our clients that we’ll continue exploring everything from end-to-end visibility to predictive analytics and real-time decision-making. In doing so, BlueCherry is better positioned than ever before to maintain its competitive edge in an increasingly complex global supply chain market.

Connect with the BlueCherry team today to schedule a personalized demo or learn how we can help you stay ahead with AI-driven solutions.