Coordinated precision, innovation, technical discipline: echoes of Sacchi at Milan Exchange

When I think about Milan, I think about the late-1980s/early-1990s, all-conquering AC Milan team managed by the footballing great Arrigo Sacchi.

 

They were some side, becoming European champions twice and winning one Italian league title while laying the foundations for a period of dominance under different management throughout the first half of the ‘90s.

 

And at Manhattan Associates’ annual Exchange event, which took place in the city 12-14 October, it was pleasing to see key themes from the supply chain presentations and business strategy sessions had echoes of Sacchi.

 

Changing the way the game is played

 

When Sacchi arrived at AC Milan in 1987, he challenged established assumptions about how football should be played. His team pressed high up the pitch, compressed space between the lines, and moved collectively to deny opponents time on the ball. Agentic AI is redesigning supply chain commerce capability in a similarly revolutionary way.

 

There were references aplenty to how the retail game has changed dramatically due to agentic. Manhattan chief product officer Brian Kinsella revealed the consumer-facing agent Maven which launched last year is now helping take care of the lion’s share of customer queries for those who’ve implemented it. Successful deflection rates of 75% are being reported by retailers such as Canadian grocer Simon’s thanks to the tech.

 

“It has full access to order and shipping, and can return any data and all the other operational data your customers are asking about,” Kinsella explained.

 

Agentic capability has also been unleashed for retail staff in Manhattan software-supported warehouses and stores, enabling workers to access information speedily. JD Sports, L’Oreal, and Ceva Logistics are all running substantial pilots in their warehouses, reporting time savings and a desire to explore this tech landscape further.

 

Author and keynote speaker Peter Hinssen reminded us that those in Silicon Valley are saying they can no longer go out for lunch “because by the time you get back, the industry has already changed”. Quite. The rapid pace of change of recent years just accelerated.

 

Coordinated precision

 

Last year, Manhattan CTO Sanjeev Siotia described the agentic age and success in this new world as akin to an orchestra playing in harmony. Lots of different components coming together to create a powerful combined result.

 

It’s a good analogy but I prefer the Sacchi Milan comparison. When he came to the club he replaced traditional Italian man-marking and deep-lying ultra defensive catenaccio tactics with his strict, coordinated zonal system – and the team moved as one.

 

This is the immediate future direction of supply chain commerce. While Manhattan has seen its customers begin implementing agentic AI in specific scenarios, the expectation is for this to evolve into more complex, orchestrated use cases across the platform.

 

Siotia talked of the potential for “implementing more orchestrated scenarios”, and connecting AI-enabled components “across the ecosystem”. With Manhattan’s cloud-based, API-first software prevalent from store and order management level through to warehouse and transportation, the capability for its technology to unite multiple elements of the retail organisation is there.

 

Although not an AI-story per se, DIY retailer Bauhaus’s chief digital officer Johannes Wechsler said using Manhattan's store order fulfilment solution has helped the business achieve that all-important coordinated precision in a crucial part of its customer offering: click & collect.

 

“In the past, it took up to 15 minutes to transfer orders from the online shop to the stores – now this is done within seconds,” he told Exchange delegates.

 

Secure at the back

 

Tassotti, Baresi, Costacurta, and Maldini the surnames of the famous backline at Milan on which Sacchi built the framework for his success. Later, under a different manager in Fabio Capello, in the 1993-94 season, that defence went a mind-blowing nine consecutive games without conceding a goal – they only conceded 15 goals in 34 league matches.

 

It was a backline that was rarely breached, and a relevant consideration in a year when retail cyberattacks and security breaches are getting more and more commonplace. “We are now in a world where cyber-risk goes parabolic,” warned Hinssen in his keynote.

 

Importantly, it was a subject addressed in the conversations in the corridors and on the stages of the Marriott Milano corridors.

 

Johan Berghs, director of IT global warehouse solutions at CEVA Logistics, spoke of the importance of moving forward in the agentic space with the relevant guardrails. JD Sports head of supply chain technology Matt Lemon said his retailer has an audit agent that logs and tracks all decisions it makes using agentic AI, as another security measure.

 

Siotia said infosec has always been a priority for Manhattan and is continually built into the platform, but he acknowledged retailers’ concerns around AI and security have intensified in recent months.

 

Kinsella added: “Because we're using AI embedded natively in the platform, we're not introducing new security risks when we're using activations. They're using the same APIs and the same security protocols as human user reviews.”

 

Power of the collective

 

In previous Exchange blogs, I’ve talked up the importance of humans and tech working in unison even in an autonomous age. And at this year’s Exchange when the agentic dawn was so well articulated, the concept of human-in-the loop was continually reinforced.

 

Galli, Baresi, Ancelotti, Rijkaard, Van Basten. As was the case with the great AC Milan teams I keep harping back to, there’s no one star or one main contributor in modern supply chain commerce. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and positive results come through a combination of people power, tech taking things forward, and AI acceleration, as Manhattan CEO Eric Clark underlined multiple times.

 

Life and business continues to become increasingly complex, so “let technology do the heavy lifting”, he noted.

 

Lemon spoke of his interest in a collaborative customer community or marketplace where retailers can share, adapt or acquire agents developed by other businesses in the Manhattan ecosystem.

 

Rob Wilkes, senior engineer manager at Asda, detailed how the competitiveness of UK grocery meant, in the past, executive teams would not allow retailers to attend events where rival retailers might be.

 

“I think everybody needs to accept that the world has moved on,” he said. “In today's tough environment, we all need to try to help each other.”

 

For many people, Milan invokes images of the fashion catwalk, industrial and economic progression, and the art and science of Leonardo Da Vinci, who lived and operated in the city for 25 years. And rightly so; it’s a city that wears many hats, and a city for all.

 

But for me, Milan is synonymous with that Sacchi AC Milan team and its legacy. And three days at Exchange were a reminder of some of their core principles.