🤖 Good Processes Keep the Monsters Away

📦 AI Took Over Supply Chains — And the Stats Tell the Story

AI has officially become the engine of modern supply chains. The market hit $19.8B in 2025, nearly triple its 2022 size, as companies trade manual fixes for machine-led precision. The results speak: 35% sharper forecasts, leaner inventories, and 300%+ ROI from AI control towers replacing old ERP dashboards. 

Leaders like South Korea and the UAE are setting the pace, while healthcare and pharma are emerging as the fastest adopters. Even small manufacturers are joining in, using low-cost AI tools to optimize sourcing, logistics, and production planning. 

👉 Read the full report for the data, ROI charts, and sector benchmarks

🍪 From Cookies to Commercials: AI Joins the Marketing Team

Mondelez is betting on AI to reshape how it produces marketing content. Facing tighter budgets and rising costs, Mondelez joins peers like Kraft Heinz and Coca-Cola in betting that AI can do creative work cheaper and faster. 

The company has invested $40 million in a generative AI tool developed with Publicis Groupe and Accenture, designed to cut ad production costs by 30% to 50%. The platform generates short video assets for brands like Chips Ahoy in the U.S. and Milka in Germany, with plans to expand to Oreo and Cadbury in other markets.

The system can churn out short TV spots and social videos in a fraction of the usual time (and price tag). For now, it’s AI-made chocolate waves and cookie close-ups, not actors. But if all goes well, the next Super Bowl ad might be brought to you by a bot — and an Oreo.

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🤖 Agentic AI Won’t Save a Messy Workflow

Everyone’s talking about agentic AI, systems that don’t just follow instructions but act on goals. But before you hand the keys to the bots, there’s the catch we keep warning about: bad processes make bad automation. (Our last podcast guest, Colin, couldn’t stress that enough.) 

A broken workflow doesn’t get smarter with AI — it just breaks faster. Studies show up to half of RPA projects fail, not because the tech is weak, but because it’s dropped into messy workflows that weren’t fixed first. 

So before letting bots take the wheel, teams need to clean up the map: define the goals, tighten the rules, and fix what’s inefficient. The golden rule of automation is simple — optimize before you automate.

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📊 Microsoft Is Turning Finance Into a Smart System

Microsoft isn’t just using AI to crunch numbers; it’s building a finance function that learns, adapts, and scales — setting a new benchmark for digital finance.

Partnering with EY, the company built Replay AI and Finance Launch AI, two internal tools that use generative AI to automate everything from financial queries to product launch workflows. 

Replay AI serves as a searchable hub for Microsoft’s financial data, generating insights and reports in seconds. Finance Launch AI pulls from past launches to draft requirements, flag compliance risks, and spot patterns across products. 

One more clear sign that digital transformation in finance isn’t theory anymore; it’s happening.

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📈 Small Businesses Say AI Is Paying Off (Without Cutting Jobs)

Small business owners are feeling surprisingly upbeat, and many are giving AI some of the credit. In a new Goldman Sachs survey of 1,400 entrepreneurs, 94% of those using AI said it’s having a positive impact, even as costs and uncertainty climb. 

Take Connie’s Chicken and Waffles in Baltimore. Co-founder Khari Parker uses tools like ChatGPT and Claude to design menus, create training materials, and forecast supply orders. The result is fewer late nights, faster decisions, and happier staff.

While big corporations debate AI’s threat to jobs, small businesses are proving a different point — when used right, AI doesn’t replace people, it amplifies them.

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