John Lander

In a rapidly evolving global supply chain landscape, SAP’s David Vallejo believes the most exciting innovations are happening in planning—and that the industry is entering a fundamentally new era. At the Gartner Supply Chain Planning Summit 2025 in Denver, Vallejo, who leads global product marketing for SAP’s supply chain portfolio, joined Scott Luton to discuss how planning is transforming, why data now sits at the center of competitiveness, and what SAP is doing to help organizations make faster, more confident decisions.   A Shift From ERP-Centric to Data-Centric Vallejo described his team’s role as one that constantly scans the market—identifying trends, customer expectations, and the problems companies will need to solve next. Those insights help shape new innovations across the SAP ecosystem. He noted that SAP has moved decisively from an ERP-centric worldview to a data-centric one. This shift is essential, he argued, because the biggest advantage in modern planning lies in having the right data—clean, connected, contextualized, and ready to drive decisions. As Vallejo put it, “It’s all about the data that I need to make better planning decisions.”   Planning Models Are No Longer Static Reflecting on how planning has evolved since he entered the field two decades…

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…