I’m deeply grateful to Supply & Demand Chain Executive for selecting me as a 2026 Pros to Know recipient. It’s an honor to be recognized alongside so many leaders pushing our industry forward.
But I’ll be honest, this recognition feels less like a personal achievement and more like validation of something the industry desperately needs: proof that AI in the supply chain can deliver predictable, measurable returns. Not someday, right now.
The problem no one wants to talk about
Walk any trade show floor—I recently got back from Manifest in Las Vegas—and you’ll hear “AI-powered” attached to everything. The demos are impressive. The marketing is polished. But when I sit down with 3PL and retail executives, I hear the same frustration: “Where are the results?”
Too much of what’s being sold as supply chain AI wasn’t built by teams who believe in it. It was acquired, bolted on, or just plain impractical. The integrations are painful. The insights are generic. The promised ROI never materializes because the solution was never designed around your operational reality; it was designed around a demo.
How to decode what vendors actually mean when they throw around AI terms, questions to ask, and what genuinely intelligent supply chain tech looks like in practice.
There’s a difference between supply chain software partners who build on what they believe and those who just believe in what they’re selling. The first group stays in the trenches with you. The second disappears after the contract is signed.
What changed my perspective
This gap between AI hype and practical AI is what drove me to lead Deposco’s Supply Chain Intelligence (SCI) initiative. Not because the world needed another AI product—but because our customers needed a partner always invested in their outcomes.
Growth doesn’t wait for Q4
SCI didn’t emerge in a vacuum. It was shaped by the realities our customers were already living.
One customer conversation in particular stuck with me. Adam Lawicki, EVP of Strategy at scale3PL, described how his team engineered operations for what he calls “ever-peak mode”—flash sales, influencer drops, and off-season surges that make every week feel like Q4.
That conversation crystallized the reality we’ve been building for: confidence in the face of volatility, predictable value under margin pressure, and flexibility in a world where peak season is permanent.
When growth is both constant and unpredictable, you need a supply chain software platform that flexes without forcing tradeoffs on accuracy or client trust.
The proof is in the performance. Adam’s team doubled their pick throughput, sustained 99.5% accuracy daily, and achieved full ROI in just six months, with compounding gains every quarter.
Go-live is the starting line, not the finish
That’s how we operate. scale3PL’s team chose to partner with us for the same reason all our customers do:
“Deposco meets us where we are. Their team stays in the trenches with us. Every single one of our clients have complimented our choice in systems and our tech stack.” — Adam Lawicki, EVP of Strategy, scale3PL
What makes the difference isn’t just the technology; it’s staying engaged long after go-live—tuning workflows, optimizing integrations, and solving problems together as our customers’ operations evolve. That’s the standard I hold my team to.
What we’re building differently
We’re not building AI in isolation, hoping customers figure out how to use it. We’re building AI-powered commerce intelligence from 15 years of real operational data across hundreds of customer environments.
Your data should train your AI
Our Data Science team develops and maintains every AI capability in-house, from the ground up, in the cloud.
- No acquisitions.
- No bolt-ons.
- No middleware translating between systems that were never designed to talk to each other.
This matters because general questions get general answers
We’ve all used enough GenAI to know that. Intelligence only matters when it understands your business—your constraints, your goals, your patterns. That’s why we built our platform to supply context from your operations and the larger market, so AI can recommend actions that respect how you actually run.
Most companies are drowning in data but starving for context
The shift I’m most passionate about: moving from systems that tell you what happened to systems that explain why and recommend what to do next.
Most supply chain leaders I talk to aren’t short on data. They’re short on time. They’re toggling between dashboards, exporting to spreadsheets, and manually connecting dots that should already be connected. By the time they’ve diagnosed a shipping cost spike or throughput dip, the damage is done. You don’t need more dashboards. You need insights.
AI agents make decision-making ultra-fast, ultra-digestible
We recently introduced Felix, our AI advisor that changes this equation. Felix delivers plain-English insights—root causes, contextual benchmarks, recommended actions—whether an executive is at their desk or listening from their mobile phone on the morning commute.
When your AI can surface that costs spiked because a carrier rate change coincided with an order surge in the Northeast, and recommend three specific actions to address it, your team spends less time hunting and more time deciding.
My team’s work is amplifying human judgment. Not replacing the expertise your people have built over years, but giving them the clarity to use it faster.
What gives me optimism
The conversations I’m having with supply chain leaders have evolved from “Should we adopt AI?” to “How do we maximize AI’s impact on our specific operations?” and “How soon can we prove ROI?”
Those are the right questions. And for the 3PLs and retail brands navigating ever-peak mode, the technology exists today to change your game.
I’m grateful to be part of a team earning that trust.
View the full list of winners: SDCExecutive’s Pros To Know of 2026.
Adnan Nathani is VP, Technology and Innovation at Deposco, where he leads the development of AI-native supply chain intelligence solutions.