JDA Software, Inc. has completed its acquisition of Blue Yonder, the market leader in artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for retail and supply chain. With Blue Yonder now part of JDA, customers across vertical industries will be able to leverage a first of its kind end-to-end supply chain solution with AI/ML intelligence built-in that enables them to better plan, analyze, execute and deliver across their operations on a cognitive, connected platform.
This acquisition accelerates JDA’s Autonomous Supply ChainTM capabilities connecting intelligent systems and data to enable automated and more profitable business decisions, while delivering optimized customer experiences. Blue Yonder’s SaaS solutions – which deliver rapid time-to-value and game-changing business value – also further fuel development of the JDA Luminate cognitive SaaS platform and solutions. Moving forward, Blue Yonder will be known as Blue Yonder, a JDA Company. Learn more about Blue Yonder at www.blueyonder.ai.
“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,” said Desikan Madhavanur, chief development officer, JDA. “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.”
“Today, we look to shape the future supply chain and reimagined retail environments with JDA, to fundamentally transform next-generation supply chains and retail merchandising operations,” said Prof. Dr. Michael Feindt, Blue Yonder founder and chief scientific officer. “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.”
The combination of JDA's long-term supply chain and merchandising experience and Blue Yonder’s ML foundations and models for retail demand forecasting, replenishment, and price optimization is a well-conceived move,” said Ivano Ortis, vice president, IDC. “JDA's acquisition of Blue Yonder will 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.”
Combined companies enable smarter decision-making and solve specific pain points cross-industry
Blue Yonder and JDA share a common mission centered on applying ML and AI on real-time supply chain networks to enable retailers and manufacturers to meet customer demand with confidence while minimizing inventory and wastage. By combining Blue Yonder’s proven data science capabilities with JDA’s foundational supply chain applications, customers can now make billions of complex inventory, pricing and shipping decisions every hour based on real-time signals such as weather, events and competitive pricing data.
Combined, JDA and Blue Yonder now serve 75 of the top 100 retailers in the world along with 77 of the top 100 consumer goods companies, and more than 4,000 customers globally. Blue Yonder’s proven data science methodologies and algorithms solve specific pain points across the supply chain by pulling in rich data to enable smarter and precise decision-making. This allows JDA to tackle a myriad of customer challenges such as critical spend and demand analyses, intra-day forecasting and precisely predicting ETAs and inventory availability, all of which are crucial success factors across the retail, supply chain and logistics industries.
Advances development of JDA’s next-generation Digital Control Tower solution – JDA LuminateTM ControlTower
Blue Yonder’s AI and ML capabilities will accelerate JDA’s SaaS solution roadmap by quickly embedding new levels of actionable intelligence to create significant value for customers. As a natural extension for the JDA Luminate platform, Blue Yonder’s technology will sit on top of the JDA platform to create immediate value. This includes the new JDA Luminate ControlTower, which connects data and enables visibility across a company’s extended supply chain. Blue Yonder’s solutions are built on Microsoft Azure, and JDA Luminate solutions will also leverage Azure as its development platform, offering an efficient, cloud-native architecture.