o9 Solutions aim10x 2025: Inside new agentic functions in demand planning

Increasingly touchless execution

He was particularly keen to explain how o9 customers are driving inventory costs down at the same time as they are increasing visibility into their business with “increased touchless execution” through agentic functions that the company is bringing to bear for real world users.

“The planning transformations that we are driving are capable of unlocking what represents 1 to 3 percent of additional sales value for customers, which is clearly a big figure for large enterprises (if not for small to medium-sized ones too). We really are at a point where volatility is rising across markets, but AI is accelerating, so there is a call to action now for leadership to grasp ways to make new value creation happen,” said Gottemukkala.

He provided an example of a hypothetical company that might be (negatively) developing a revenue gap due to other products emerging and existing in the market. At that point, there is then a calculation process to look for ways to close that revenue gap, but the company needs to know whether the supply chain can support the proposed changes. A business needs to be able to draw upon functional planning systems and datasets (and bring perhaps a dozen people together over a couple of weeks) in order to make the change if it is validated.

“But, imagine if one person is able to perform the supply chain analysis and incremental revenue change analysis themselves all from one centralised platform… that is what o9 represents in terms of platform capability,” said Gottemukkala. “In a matter of minutes, an AI agent can make the whole workflow process described here possible and allow the business to form its next strategic moves.”

Talking about the learning and improvement challenge that firms face today, there is normally company accountability that needs to be validated before changes can be made. This takes a lot of time because departments are often resistant to sharing information, so humans (sometimes involuntarily) naturally introduce an element of inertia into the way enterprises operate.

One team, one plan

Gottemukkala says that we can now use AI to handle “all the things that are going wrong” inside businesses and help make decisions so much faster without waiting for reports (because reports are now generated on the fly as new processes are executed) and subsequent agents also provide post-game analysis.

“The North Star vision that we are trying to drive towards is all about one team and one plan for any business,” said Gottemukkala. “We want to show how firms can construct a model that encapsulates all long-term strategic decisions (such as capacity planning) alongside fast-paced daily decisions in a connected fashion. To make those decisions happen, firms need visibility across the entire enterprise, entire supply chain, entire markets (with market risks and other factors) and more. We should remember that so much of that knowledge is locked away in silos (often in people’s heads), but fusing all that information together in one place is what we call the integrated business planning and execution model… and it’s what has led o9 to create its Digital Brain platform offering.”

Moving on to explain how o9 has combined large language models with its own approach to Enterprise Knowledge Graph (EKG) models and the power of generative and agentic AI, Gottemukkala says that firms can get a new route to forward visibility, forecasting, scenario planning, an analysis of risks and opportunities and as such be able to align orders, tasks, jobs and human workflows in the new digital workplace.

Former CEO of Unilever

Former CEO of Unilever, Paul Polman, now a businessman, author and speaker also hosted a keynote session. Talking about the impact of AI on businesses today, Polman says that whole new industries are being created today and that automation itself will separate the leaders from the laggards.

“As Roman Emperor Aurelias said, obstacles are not the things blocking your path… they are indeed the path itself,” said Polman, he then urged the audience to embrace change and not freeze, flight or fright when disruption happens. “Change cuts into identity, belonging and security, so humans often find it hard. “The art of leadership is transforming fear [in any scenario] into opportunity. I’ve come to not only embrace change, I also view it as a tool for personal development… my motto is that it’s better to make the dust [and go forward with change] that eat the dust [and fall behind],” he added.

Moving into breakout sessions, this event covered industrial manufacturing and the state of the industry with a client story featuring Keurig Dr Pepper. This session also featured a “Planning Brain” session that showcased a demo devoted to how to handle retail growth.

Other sessions followed, including an Accenture keynote and a client story focusing on ZAMP Brazil, a major restaurant operator. Further here, PwC’s keynote was titled: Is Your Organisation Ready for AI?

o9’s solidified sustainability solutions

A key part of the way o9 Solutions talks about the future (its future roadmap, our future use of technology… and the planet’s wider implementation and deployment all software, not just the planning solutions space) comes down to sustainability.

The company underlines that fact by pointing out that – on the o9 platform – organisations can measure their digital footprint (incorporating measures for data usage, software applications, cloud instances, input/output throughput, compute processing consumption and so on) with end-to-end visibility across their own technology and business value chain.

The company talks about the “transition to circular operations” and the opportunity to revamp scenario planning with sustainability at the core. Platform specialisations in the arena from o9 have included a set of sustainability solutions that are embedded in its integrated business planning platform, including product and enterprise environmental footprint measurement, full traceability, Environmental Social & Governance risk management, ESG-enabled business planning, sustainable sourcing and supply chain circularity.

“A significant portion of a company’s environmental and social impact stems from its supply chain activities,” said Stanton Thomas, senior vice president of sustainability, o9 Solutions. “While there is a growing number of sustainability-focused software and consulting companies entering the market, sustainability initiatives are currently managed outside of core enterprise and supply chain planning systems. With our sustainability solutions embedded in the o9 platform, we are positioned to combine our value chain modelling technology with a complete data management capability for acquiring, validating, cleansing and harmonising ESG data from diverse structured and unstructured sources.”

One particular offering in this space in the supply chain software space is o9’s sustainability solutions that help organisations improve the environmental and social impact KPIs of their supply chains. Companies that operate some of the largest and most complex global supply chains can now not only measure and report on their sustainability performance, but can also make planning decisions to reduce their carbon footprint and make meaningful progress toward net-zero goals.

o9 Digital Brain platform

The o9 sustainability solutions incorporate international standards-based sustainability metrics, analytics and KPIs into the AI-enabled o9 Digital Brain platform, powered by its patented Enterprise Knowledge Graph technology for supply chain modelling.

Thomas and team say that integrating full-spectrum sustainability data into the o9 platform gives companies the ability to assess their sustainability performance within all planning and operational activities, as well as the ability to identify and make data-driven decisions around tradeoffs between financial costs, service levels and ESG objectives.

Key takeaways…

Looking big picture, o9 has clearly been a company that has enjoyed being in the right time and the right place (remember the supply chain panic factors that circulated throughout the Covid-19 pandemic?)… and, further, the organisation’s platform has clearly flourished as a result of the arrival of predictive, generative and now agentic AI.

But to say that o9 has been lucky would be to do it a disservice; CEO Gottemukkala had the impetus to create and innovate as co-founder and the platform has grown to serve the needs of organisations now embracing digital planning and management.

This was the first time we have been able to focus on o9 Solutions; it is unquestionably not the last.

In full flow (all the way down the supply chain): Chakri Gottemukkala, o9 Solutions co-founder & CEO.