We’re all in the mood for a melody: Billy Joel, agentic AI, and Manhattan Exchange 2025

I don’t know what Billy Joel’s views on agentic AI are but I’m hoping he’ll forgive me the link between the rousing chorus of one of his most famous songs and technological advancements in supply chain commerce.

“We’re all in the mood for a melody,” he bellows in his 1973 classic Piano Man, as the song hits its most stirring heights.

I really am going to try hard not to overdo this analogy, but the song’s setting is a bar full of colourful characters of differing luck and circumstance. They’re in need of a pick-me-up from their troubles – even “John at the bar” has “some place he’d rather be”.

And right now, retailers are those challenged individuals, battling day-to-day rising operational costs, an uncertain geo-political environment, and a fickle consumer base restricted by the cost of living crisis – these retailers are in the mood for a melody to get them singing again.

There’s a lot of hope within retailer headquarters that Agentic AI can be the catalyst for that melody.

Manhattan Associates chief technology officer (CTO), Sanjeev Siotia, was full of musical comparisons himself when on stage at Exchange 2025, which took place in Antwerp, Belgium between 6-8 October. Talking of Manhattan’s API-first microservices approach and investment in agentic AI, he described the architecture behind its end-to-end supply chain software as hundreds of services in harmony like a “world class orchestra”.

He called agentic AI the “dynamic composer” bringing all the unique parts of the ensemble together. Siotia argued agentic AI “can read the room and understand the moment”, helping retailers using Manhattan’s software to get the most out of it, outsource mundane tasks to automation, and accelerate their productivity levels.

During Siotia’s session at the Hilton Antwerp Old Town, we saw the art of what is possible in warehouse management thanks to this new technological revolution, with the demonstration of voice-activated labour optimisation AI agents advising how best to deploy staff based on current site workload and progress.

AI agents can now be embedded into the technological infrastructure from the back end to the front end of retail. The CTO reflected on the power of retailers using store management agents, to help “slice and dice data” to allow those in charge to quickly compare week-by-week trading and understand anomalies in performance.

Frontline staff using AI in stores was a prominent feature of this year’s Exchange. Manhattan senior vice president for product management Brian Kinsella – Siotia’s “partner in crime” as he put it – said the AI-fuelled features needed in store resemble a “newsfeed of recommendations” rather than a chatbot you ask questions to.

It’s made possible, Siotia said, because the AI agents being developed have access to all APIs within the Manhattan Active Platform. Manhattan’s viewpoint is when a system is built on a cloud-native, API-first infrastructure and is combined with agentic AI, it provides transparent real-time information that supports business agility and the ability to dynamically orchestrate workflows. 

Earlier this year, Manhattan Agent Foundry was launched by Siotia and his team to enable retailers to rapidly build and deploy their own agents within the Manhattan ecosystem. Through the foundry, these can combine with agents from third-party tech partners and Manhattan itself to help create tech infrastructure tailored to meet retailers’ individual needs and proposition.

This plays into what new Manhattan CEO Eric Clark said about the business not wanting to be “the bottleneck of its own growth”. It is therefore keen to embrace an integrated partner network, which includes collaboration with the likes of Google Cloud Platform and Deloitte – and Manhattan envisions a future where hundreds of AI agents are involved across every process a retailer or wholesaler runs.

All the talk of agents is no vanity project to sound fashionable; the North Star is the retailer and wholesaler need for better efficiency and simplicity in how they operate.

“The next great technology innovation for supply chain commerce has arrived,” Siotia said of agentic AI, adding that Manhattan is aware of the need for all organisations to be responsible and secure in their use of the new strands of AI.

Those at the forefront of commerce are in the mood for a melody – they need a melody amid the difficult times they are encountering – and there is a growing realisation within retail and wholesale spaces that agentic AI could be an answer to some of their challenges. It could be what’s going to get them “feelin' alright”, to use some more of those Joel lyrics.