EMILY NICHOLLS
AI IN SUPPLY CHAIN
Supply chain planning and retail operations have had to evolve rapidly in recent years. A volatile market, geopolitical disruption and a whole host of industry-specific challenges have meant linear or static ways of working no longer cut it. What has followed is nothing short of a retail revolution – one that is still ongoing, and many are struggling to keep up with.
At the forefront of this shift is integrated business planning( IBP) and AI-powered inventory management, championed by experts like Emily Nicholls, Vice President of Supply Chain Applications at Anaplan.
Emily’ s unconventional career path from nuclear submarines to advanced analytics consultancy provides a unique perspective on practical problem-solving. She is driving the global go-to-market strategy for Anaplan’ s supply chain solutions, with a focus on replacing fragmented, spreadsheet-reliant processes with resilient, integrated systems.
She explains the current market volatility stems largely from a disconnect between operational reality and financial constraints. In her opinion, the traditional operational model is simply too slow.
“ For firms facing market volatility, the biggest challenge is connecting operational inventory planning with financial guardrails,” she says.
By embedding financial parameters directly into operational models, supply chains can“ reduce decision latency – the gap between information being received
EMILY NICHOLLS
TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT OF SUPPLY CHAIN APPLICATIONS
COMPANY: ANAPLAN INDUSTRY: SOFTWARE
Emily leads global go-to-market strategy for supply chain planning. With roots in engineering and analytics, she helps enterprises integrate AI, scenario planning and decision excellence to modernise planning and resilience.
and a decision being made”. This allows for agile, pre-authorised actions, such as increasing safety stock levels to protect service levels without waiting for lengthy financial sign-offs at a critical time.
Her vision for more connected, financially-aware planning runs parallel to real-world innovators like Walmart. It has established an agentic retail ecosystem that teases a future in which machine intelligence orchestrates logistics, elevates the customer experience and embeds resilience at every stage.
Resilience through real-time insight Walmart views AI as“ the heartbeat of a highly adaptive, agentic retail ecosystem.” Its agentic AI systems are designed to autonomously detect, diagnose and correct operational issues, providing a Unified Inventory Intelligence across all stores, fulfilment centres and distribution hubs.
102 January 2026