Gillan Hawkes

At the Gartner Supply Chain Planning Summit in Denver, Scott Luton sat down with Nari Viswanathan, a veteran innovator in the planning and procurement technology space and a key leader at Coupa. The two reconnected after several recent collaborations—including webinars, industry sessions, and conversations in Dallas—and discussed the new realities of supply chain planning and how organizations are embracing technology like never before.   Coupa and Autonomous Spend Management For those less familiar with Coupa, Viswanathan explained the company as the global leader in autonomous spend management—a framework that brings together direct and indirect spending to help organizations manage total spend more intelligently. Direct spend, of course, is where supply chain operations come into focus, making planning, design, and cost optimization central to the value Coupa delivers. Viswanathan leads Coupa’s global supply chain strategy, shaping how the company positions and scales its solutions across the market. After years spent in supply chain planning technology, he now sits at the intersection of procurement, supply chain, and advanced analytics—an area he believes has never been more exciting or more critical.   Old Problems, New Pressures—and a Greater Willingness to Innovate When asked about the biggest challenges facing planners today, Viswanathan emphasized a…

Brought to you in partnership with the Journal of Business Logistics   Companies are investing heavily in safety technology. Trucking fleets now rely on cameras, collision warnings, lane alerts, adaptive cruise control, and automated braking to reduce crashes and protect drivers. That investment assumes a straightforward outcome. More technology should lead to safer behavior. It does not always work that way. Research in the Journal of Business Logistics shows that the same technologies designed to improve safety can also undermine it. The difference comes down to how drivers experience the tools and how managers use them. The problem is not the system. It is the interaction around it.   How safety technology fails in practice The study points to two common patterns that show up across fleets. The first is avoidance. Some drivers ignore or disable alerts. They cover inward-facing cameras or override automated features. This behavior shows up when the system feels intrusive or disconnected from real driving conditions. Frequent warnings and false alarms create frustration. Experienced drivers, in particular, may feel the technology challenges their judgment rather than supports it. When that happens, drivers do not adapt to the system. They route around it. The second pattern is…