Accenture has invested, through Accenture Ventures, in Aera Technology, a leader in agentic decision intelligence for enterprises. The companies will combine Aera’s decision intelligence and Accenture’s AI-enabled supply chain capabilities to bring AI-led, real-time decision-making solutions to complex global supply chains in the consumer goods, high-tech, life sciences, mining and oil & gas industries.
Most supply chains today rely on fragmented, manual processes. According to Accenture research, the majority of companies are still in the early stages of adopting autonomous capabilities. While 25% of respondents have begun their journey toward autonomy, the current median maturity across supply chain activities is only 16% on an index ranging from 0% (fully manual) to 100% (fully autonomous). This is one of the highest barriers to companies’ competitiveness and resilience in times of frequent disruptive events.
Aera agentic decision intelligence is critical to AI-enabled supply chains. It combines agentic AI, a proprietary decision data model and real-time orchestration engines to deliver trusted and transparent decisions across supply chain, procurement, finance and operations. Aera agents continuously monitor changes, improve supply and demand decisions, and are able to execute actions across the enterprise. They learn from every outcome to enhance performance over time, helping enterprises become more agile and resilient and reduce cost-to-serve.
“Today’s business environment is constantly stress-testing supply chains,” said Chris McDivitt, global lead for autonomous supply chains at Accenture. “The speed at which decisions are required to balance costs and services is outstripping what manual, siloed processes can sustain. Our partnership with Aera Technology will enable highly resilient, AI-enabled supply chains that can sense change before disruption hits, equip our clients’ supply chain teams with recommendations how to act, and execute many of those decisions automatically under human oversight.”
The Hershey Company is embedding AI-enabled decision making in its supply chains with support from Aera and Accenture.
“The massive volatility in the supply chains today require AI-enabled decision-making, which we are using to identify and avoid a problem before it occurs,” said Douglas Guilherme, global supply chain senior vice president at The Hershey Company. “Accenture and Aera’s partnership is testament to where next-generation supply chains are headed, and we’re looking forward to seeing the solutions their collaboration will deliver.”
“The opportunity in front of us is extraordinary. Decision intelligence is enabling a new operating model where intelligent systems manage complexity at speed and scale, and people focus on strategy and performance,” said Fred Laluyaux, Co-Founder and CEO, Aera Technology. “At Aera, we see this shift firsthand, and together with Accenture, we’re accelerating how organizations scale this capability so they can operate with greater precision, speed, and impact.”
