Arizona State University’s Brett Duarte on AI supply chain strategy, part 1: procurement, supplier risk, and contract intelligence Boston Consulting Group found AI leaders doubling revenue on specific projects and cutting costs 40 to 50%. McKinsey found that under 1% of organizations that adopted AI have seen enterprise-wide impact. The distance between those two numbers is the whole job of an AI supply chain strategy. Season 2, Episode 13 of Data Blades opens a 3-part mini-series with Professor Brett Duarte of Arizona State University's W. P. Carey School of Business, home to the #2 ranked supply chain program in the country. The series follows ASU's AI-Enabled Supply Chain Strategy executive program running October 5 to 7 on the Tempe campus: procurement in part 1, operations in part 2, logistics in part 3. Today we start where the money starts. Brett names the two things supply chain leaders keep hitting. First, infrastructure: siloed systems, data quality problems, fragmentation, and AI "slapped on the legacy systems" so nobody can see the supply chain end to end. Second, adoption, which is just whether employees pick the tools up and use them. Then he gets specific about agentic AI in procurement. Agents are a digital workforce that can plan, reason, act, and learn. A procurement agent pulls structured and unstructured data, reads a new tariff into a pricing picture, runs sentiment analysis on news about a supplier or a region, and automates the supplier back-and-forth that used to live in email threads and manual ERP lookups. A contract agent reads the whole contract portfolio, flags what has expired or is up for renewal, checks terms against real purchase orders and delivery performance, and schedules the renegotiation conversation with evidence attached. Casey and Ricardo also get into what supplier scorecards and Kraljic matrix segmentation look like when an agent maintains them, and why ASU built an AI lab with a supply chain digital twin to watch how agents behave when a disruption hits. What you'll learn in this episode. Why AI pilots keep working while enterprise-wide impact stalls, and the two blockers Brett hears most from supply chain leaders [00:04:59]How ASU's three-part mission shows up as an AI lab and a supply chain digital twin for testing agents against simulated disruptions [00:07:21]What the 3-day AI-Enabled Supply Chain Strategy program covers, day by day, and who it's built for [00:09:15]Agentic AI explained: plan, reason, act, learn, and the maturity curve from AI assistant to automated workflows to a frontier firm [00:12:16]Why executives build their own agent in the room, then watch three agents talk to each other through a simulated disruption [00:14:08]Where agentic AI in procurement lands first: tactical work like supplier identification and purchase orders, strategic work like spend analytics, category management, and supplier risk [00:15:22]How a contract agent handles renewals, terms violations, delivery misses, and supplier scorecards, and where the Kraljic matrix fits [00:17:12] Next Episode. Part 2 moves downstream into operations: forecasting, inventory, and the gap between a model that predicts well and a business that acts on it. If procurement is where you decide what to buy, operations is where you find out whether you got it right. Taken together, the three parts cover a full AI supply chain strategy from the front end to the back. Follow Data Blades so you don't miss it. Support Our Sponsors. There’s still time to join us at RetailClub AI Festival. From the founders of Shoptalk and Groceryshop, RetailClub AI Festival brings together 2,000 industry leaders from September 22 to 24 for three days fully outdoors in Huntington Beach focused entirely on how AI is transforming retail. Hear from 150 leaders shaping how AI is being used across the industry, explore the technologies changing how retail works, and connect with senior leaders from across retail, brands, technology and investment. Late registration is now available at retailclub.com/retail-razor-podcast. We’ll see you in Huntington Beach! W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University. ASU is a leading public research university and its W. P. Carey School of Business is the largest in the United States. AI-Enabled Supply Chain Strategy is a 3-day executive program running October 5-7, built by the #2-ranked Supply Chain Management department. The program is designed for senior leaders setting AI strategy across procurement, logistics, and operations. Register at https://specialevents.asu.edu/878064 with ID Code retailrazorasu for $1,500 off. Subscribe & Follow. Love this episode? Drop us a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Goodpods. Don't forget to like and subscribe to The Retail Razor: Data Blades for more episodes on customer experience, retail marketing, AI in retail, and data‑driven transformation! Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/ Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://go.retailrazor.com/utube About Our Guest. Brett Duarte, Ph.D. https://www.linkedin.com/in/brettduarte/ Arizona State University | W. P. Carey School of Business NASPO Department of Supply Chain Management Clinical Associate Professor Senior Faculty Co-Director – MSBA wpcarey.asu.edu | research.wpcarey.asu.edu Brett Duarte is a Clinical Associate Professor in the NASPO Department of Supply Chain Management at Arizona State University's W. P. Carey School of Business, the largest business school in the United States with more than 25,000 students. He is senior faculty co-director of the school's Master of Science in Business Analytics program and assistant chair for graduate programs in supply chain. ASU's supply chain management program is ranked #2 in the country by U.S. News and World Report. Brett is on the faculty teaching the AI-Enabled Supply Chain Strategy Executive Program this October. Chapters (00:00) Teaser (00:29) Show Intro (04:18) Welcome & Introductions (04:59) AI Adoption Challenges (07:21) ASU's Three-Part Mission (09:15) AI Enablement Program Overview (12:14) Understanding Agentic AI (14:08) Building Agents Hands-On (15:22) Procurement & Sourcing Use Cases (17:12) Contract Management & Supplier Risk (19:57) Wrapping Up Part One (20:44) Show Close About your Hosts Helping you cut through the clutter in retail data insights: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Thought Leader in Retail and eCommerce, a Top 25 Thought Leader in Careers, a Top 50 Thought Leader in Agentic AI, AGI and Management, and a Top 100 Thought Leader in AI Ethics, Marketing, Digital Transformation andTransformation. Thinkers 360 also named him a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the partner marketing leader for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T, and CEO of Luxlock. She is a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2026, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, Casey is obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer and is slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Music Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Tech Lore from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.
