Vanessa Wieners

Special Guest Blog Post written by Parabola Founder & CEO, Alex Yaseen   Operators are under pressure. They’re expected to move faster, do more with less, and somehow keep everything running smoothly while their systems, tools, and data are a mess. Now, AI is adding a whole new layer. On one hand, it’s exciting. The potential is real. On the other, a lot of teams feel stuck. They know they should be using AI, but they’re not sure where it fits into their day-to-day work. These are the five questions I get asked most often—whether someone’s trying to get started with automation, or trying to figure out how AI actually helps. 1. Can we automate this, or is it too messy? This question usually comes from someone deep in a spreadsheet that was never meant to scale. The short answer is: yes, you can probably automate it. But the longer answer is that you’ll need to rethink the process first. AI can help summarize, transform, and clean data—but it won’t fix a broken workflow. That’s on you. The best teams pair structured automation with lightweight AI to get leverage. Think: using rules and logic to standardize a workflow, and AI…

Special Guest Blog Post written by Philip Vervloesem   If your supply chain planning still runs on a monthly cycle, 2026 will be uncomfortable. We are operating in a polycrisis where change is constant, and responses need to be fast enough to keep up. From customer conversations, industry research, and leadership discussions at the Gartner supply chain conferences, a clear pattern has emerged: the organizations pulling ahead are not planning more often. They are embedding agility, intelligence, and speed into the way they make decisions. Here are five predictions shaping supply chain excellence in 2026 – our “bingo card” for what’s now table stakes.   1. Continuous, always-on planning is a must Monthly or quarterly cycles are no longer enough. The organizations that outperform treat planning as a continuous capability embedded in daily operations, and make it part of their governance and operational excellence. Imagine this: a sudden surge in demand hits or a supplier flags a delay. Instead of waiting for the next planning cycle, teams immediately evaluate options, share insights across functions, and adjust course. Planning stops being a calendar exercise and starts shaping real-time decisions.   “By shifting from process-centric to decision-centric planning, we now run hundreds…