Building Stronger, Smarter Supply Chains

About this issue

Building Stronger, Smarter Supply Chains

How can organizations keep operations moving when disruption becomes a continuing condition? ERP News Magazine Issue 57, February 2026, examines supply chain resilience through AI-enabled forecasting, connected ERP workflows, and the security foundations that make operational information dependable. Its cover theme, Building Stronger, Smarter Supply Chains, brings together executive perspectives, manufacturing analysis, industry announcements, and five customer stories.

The issue treats resilience as a combination of visibility, coordination, and informed judgment. Forecasting and automation matter, but their usefulness depends on how systems exchange data, how teams respond to exceptions, and how responsibility is maintained when AI becomes part of business processes. Across the issue, enterprise technology is assessed in relation to practical operational needs.

Executive Perspectives: Partnerships, Agentic ERP, and Trusted AI

Brenda Nobleza, Vice President of Channel Solutions at Epicor, explains the company's services-led, partner-first growth strategy. Her interview explores industry specialization, cloud enablement, implementation expertise, and recurring services as foundations for durable customer relationships. Rather than presenting ERP partnerships solely as software resale, she describes a practice built around advisory work, optimization, and continuing business value for mid-market organizations.

Ron Davis, Senior Vice President of Product Engineering at QAD | Redzone, discusses the transition from systems of record to systems of action. He describes Champion AI and role-specific support for shift preparation, inventory decisions, maintenance follow-ups, and operational escalation. The conversation emphasizes intelligence embedded in existing workflows, supported by manufacturing context and human review. Early customer examples are vendor-reported experiences, not guarantees of savings or implementation speed for every manufacturer.

Ivan Mans, Co-Founder and Board Member at SecurityBridge, examines the gap between identifying SAP vulnerabilities and deciding what to address first. He explains how the AI Companion combines security knowledge with customer-specific context to prioritize findings and recommend remediation. Confidentiality, context-preserving anonymization, and human accountability are central: the product is described as advisory, with unattended remediation outside its stated scope at the time of the interview.

Johnny Than, CEO and Founder of Appficiency, presents AskCipher as a natural-language interface across enterprise applications such as NetSuite, Salesforce, and Quickbase. The discussion connects cross-system orchestration with persistent organizational memory and contextual assistance. His vision places ERP beneath a simpler interaction layer while preserving approval for sensitive actions. The comparative construction-company scenario uses beta-informed projections, so its figures should be read as illustrative expectations rather than a completed customer implementation.

Manufacturing Analysis: Readiness, Forecasting, and Operational Discipline

Chris Pinaire of Global Shop Solutions examines five changes manufacturers are making: broader automation, more effective business intelligence, cloud-based ERP cybersecurity, sustainability, and preparation for future customer needs. His contribution encourages manufacturers to connect technology choices with defined problems, measurable goals, and a realistic adoption strategy.

Aaron Harris, Global CTO at Sage, considers the changing relationship between finance leadership and AI. His 2026 predictions emphasize CFO accountability, evidence-based AI assurance, and the growing strategic influence of technology leadership in accounting firms. Explainability and traceability are presented as necessary conditions for confidence in financial workflows.

Brent Dawkins, Director of Product Marketing at QAD, explores AI in manufacturing through predictive maintenance, quality control, supply chain visibility, intelligent automation, and human-robot collaboration. The article also addresses implementation costs, skills, and cybersecurity, alongside QAD's case for manufacturing-specific AI.

Maggie Slowik, Global Industry Director for Manufacturing at IFS, argues that operational structures must evolve alongside technology. Her predictions examine AI-enabled organizational design, continuous internal supply chain intelligence, sustainability embedded in operations, and collaboration between people and robots. Malene Hartung, Ecosystem Insights Manager at Maersk Growth, extends the discussion into logistics startups, highlighting agentic orchestration, control towers as decision engines, and proactive compliance and risk intelligence.

Rootstock's production scheduling analysis brings the theme back to everyday execution. It traces how unstable schedules affect labor, equipment, inventory, supplier relationships, customer trust, and planning. Connected material, capacity, and shop-floor information is presented as a basis for reducing manual intervention and protecting throughput.

Industry Developments: From AI Ambition to Execution

The news section covers IFS's technology partnership with the Cadillac Formula 1 Team, Aptean's acquisition of OpsVeda to complement Logility, and Sage Copilot in Sage Operations. Capgemini research examines pragmatic AI investment, leadership readiness, and governance, while Redwood Software's manufacturing survey highlights the gap between AI interest and readiness to scale. Workday's planned CAD $1 billion investment in Canada and Protera's acquisition of Redfig add perspectives on enterprise capability-building and SAP modernization. Announced plans and anticipated integration benefits remain distinct from achieved results.

Customer Stories: Security, Visibility, and Reliable Enterprise Operations

An unnamed European multinational telecommunications company works with Capgemini to strengthen privileged access management using CyberArk. The case describes cloud-based controls, application and database onboarding, credential management, and disaster recovery. It reports 25 databases onboarded and improved access governance; the customer is not identified by name.

Richco Harley-Davidson in Chiang Mai implements Odoo with Taube Digital to connect inventory, sales, CRM, field service, fleet workflows, and shared knowledge. Managing more than 50,000 parts makes real-time visibility important to both service and management. The story reports better coordination and a unified view of operations without supplying a quantified financial return.

Bayer's Pharmaceuticals Division works with NTT DATA and Nozomi Networks to improve visibility across OT environments at its 15 largest sites worldwide. Guardian appliances and a Central Management Console support asset discovery, communication monitoring, and centralized risk oversight. The case describes stronger detection and operational transparency without establishing a quantified reduction in cyber incidents.

SP Electricity North West uses Rimini Street's SAP expertise to resolve recurring outages and implement single sign-on within a customized SAP environment. The story reports a 99% reduction in password reset tickets, allowing service desk staff to concentrate on more complex work. It illustrates selective improvement of an existing ERP estate rather than an obligatory platform replacement.

DKSH adopts SecurityBridge Patch Management to simplify the review and handling of SAP Security Notes. The case describes automated processes, more consistent remediation timelines, and wider participation within the SAP Basis team. Its reported benefits are qualitative, with no independently verified numerical ROI supplied.

Together, these contributions show how supply chain resilience extends beyond forecasting. Reliable execution also depends on specialist partnerships, secure enterprise systems, connected operational data, and teams able to act with clarity when conditions change.