Rebecca Costa

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…

Stay up to date on all the latest conversations, interviews, and episodes we released this week here at Supply Chain Now! We started this week off with an episode of Digital Transformers with host Kevin L. Jackson. During this episode, Kevin sits down with three digital experts to discuss new approaches to establishing trust and provenance within a supply chain that is increasingly both digital and physical. This episode features Dustin McIntire the CTO of COMSovereign Holding Corporation. Eric Adolphe the CEO of Forward Edge-AI and Joshua Pendrick the CEO and Co-founder of Rypplzz. For Monday’s This Week In Business History episode, Kelly Barner talks about the political act that led to an increase in organized crime and the end of the Great Depression. On Tuesday, we released a new episode of Supply Chain Now with host Scott Luton and guest host Allison Giddens. They welcomed the head of Global Supply Chain for Peloton, Jennifer McKeehan, to the show. They discussed how the hybrid work environment is allowing the best leaders to shine by continuing to build strong, meaningful relationships, and much more. This week we released an episode of Logistics With Purpose with hosts Enrique Alvarez and Kristi Porter.…