Nate Shutes

At Gartner Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo 2026 in Orlando, some of the sharpest minds in supply chain gathered to tackle one central question: what does the next operating model for supply chain actually look like? In a special livestream conversation, Scott Luton sat down with Mike Griswold, VP Analyst at Gartner, alongside fellow Supply Chain Now hosts Karin Bursa and Jake Barr, to unpack the biggest themes emerging from this year’s symposium. The consensus? Supply chain leaders are moving beyond AI fascination and toward something much bigger: redesigning how decisions, workflows, and organizations operate.   AI Is No Longer the Story. Outcomes Are One of the strongest themes from the event was a more mature, pragmatic approach to AI adoption. According to Mike Griswold, many organizations are finally moving past the “shock and awe” phase that dominated conversations a year ago. “People need to figure out exactly what problem or problems AI is going to solve for them,” Griswold explains. That may sound simple, but it represents a significant shift. Instead of experimenting with AI for AI’s sake, companies are becoming more disciplined about identifying operational value and measurable business outcomes. Griswold also warns against a familiar trap: creating “highly efficient…

This post is written by our friends at e2open. E2open is the connected supply chain software platform that enables the world’s largest companies to transform the way they make, move, and sell goods and services. Moving as one.™ Learn More: www.e2open.com.   Parcel used to be the lightweight cousin of freight: important, but not something that kept supply chain leaders up at night. Those days are long gone. Today, parcel volumes rival truckload execution in complexity, visibility requirements, and cost impact. For many enterprises, parcel management software now determines whether omnichannel promises are kept—or quietly broken—one late delivery at a time. The problem isn’t parcel itself, but where it lives. When parcel operates in a separate system from your transportation management system (TMS), costs creep up, execution gets messy, and performance suffers. Integrating parcel directly into TMS workflows turns shipping from a necessary evil into a strategic advantage.   Parcel management: from warehouse detail to board-level problem Parcel complexity exploded as e-commerce, ship-from-store, and direct-to-consumer models took center stage. More carriers, more service levels, more delivery promises—and far more returns—turned parcel shipping into a daily operational chess match. That complexity has consequences. Parcel spend now shows up on executive radar.…