JDA has enhanced its AI and machine learning capabilities by buying specialist firm Blue Yonder.
Both companies provide supply chain services for retailers, with the acquisition combining Blue Yonder’s data analysis capabilities with JDA’s end user applications.
Customers will now be able to use real-time information about weather and events as well as competitive pricing data to make vast numbers of complex decisions about their inventory, pricing and shipping.
Blue Yonder’s technology will sit within JDA’s Luminate platform, including in the Luminate ControlTower platform. This connects data and provides visibility across a company’s supply chain.
JDA expects critical spend and demand analyses, intra-day forecasting and precise predictions of arrival times and inventory availability to be key areas that benefit from the new technology.
The combined entity will now serve over 4,000 customers globally.
Desikan Madhavanur, chief development officer at JDA, said: “As we execute on our vision for a truly Autonomous Supply Chain, completing our acquisition of Blue Yonder is a pivotal phase in that journey.
“Blue Yonder will rapidly accelerate the JDA Luminate product roadmap, helping us to continually deliver cognitive solutions that deliver game-changing and impactful business value to our customers. The Blue Yonder portfolio of AI/ML-based capabilities is available here and now to engage and deliver to our customers.”
Michael Feindt, Blue Yonder chief scientific officer, said the deal would “fundamentally transform next-generation supply chains and retail merchandising operations.
“Through Blue Yonder’s proven data science capabilities in our AI and ML solutions, we will enable real-time decision-making that unlocks more autonomous, profitable business decisions throughout our customers’ extended enterprises, unleashing the full business impact of intelligent data and systems.”
Ivano Ortis, vice president at IDC, said the acquisition would “generate value for retailers in their transformation toward digital supply chains and a micro-merchandising approach, providing an important impulse for the adoption of AI-enabled commerce.”
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