Rear Admiral Casey W. Coane

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…

A Shift in the Narrative for 2026 In a recent conversation, Scott Luton spoke with Mark Gilham, Vice President & Head of Global Advisory at Enable, about what supply chain and commercial leaders should expect from the year ahead. While many annual outlooks attempt to forecast the next major disruption, Gilham offered a different lens: 2026 may become the “year of no excuses.” After years defined by a global pandemic, inflationary shocks, geopolitical instability, supply shortages, and the rapid rise of AI, organizations have already endured extraordinary volatility. Businesses not only survived, but in many cases adapted and grew. According to Gilham, that reality weakens the argument that disruption alone explains underperformance. Disruption is not disappearing, he cautioned, but leaders can only lean on it for so long.   Why a Calmer Year Raises the Bar Gilham argued that if external conditions stabilize even slightly, the pressure on leadership actually increases. A less chaotic environment removes convenient explanations and shines a brighter light on internal shortcomings. Process gaps, misaligned incentives, and execution failures become harder to ignore when the world is not on fire. Rather than waiting for certainty, Gilham believes leaders should act decisively. This does not mean radical…