On November 4th, 2025, in the heart of the financial capital of the world, I attended Aera Technology’s annual hub conference. In a single day, Aera featured customer case stories with Hershey’s, Western Governors University, and AstraZeneca. There were also several conversations about how Decision Intelligence is being utilized in the global market by consulting and research firms, including IDC and Accenture.
Aera Technology’s Decision Intelligence (DI) is a platform and approach that digitalizes, augments, and automates decision-making across an enterprise. “The automation of decision-making.” Aera’s decision intelligence (DI) is comprised of three pillars: automation, data & analytics, and artificial intelligence. Aera shared that its platform helped make 25 million decisions in 2024, and expects this year to surpass the last.
“Revolutionary” is a word used frequently at tech conferences, but Fred Laluyaux, the CEO, made clear that for the first time, we are digitizing reasoning. We are in a transformative era of people making decisions supported by machines, to an era of machines making decisions guided by people.
AI’s Role in Decision Intelligence:
Megha Kumar of IDC presented results of a 2025 Decision Intelligence survey. She explained that operational decisions are made frequently, while situational decision-making occurs less often. Organizations face challenges in decision-making due to non-standardized processes, a lack of data access, and diverse applications for decision-making. In 2023, AI was just beginning to make waves in businesses and was not yet integrated into core decision-making. By 2025, AI will have become more integral.
Decision intelligence comprises six core competencies: data acquisition, data analysis with AI, simulations, decision recommendations, execution, and monitoring. Decision intelligence impacts supply chain, operations, logistics, procurement, sales, marketing, finance, and IT.
AI is becoming strategic for organizations, with 90% of companies transforming their operations using AI. AI is used for proactive, contextual, and data-driven decision-making. IDC predicts that 60% of new economic value will come from digital businesses by 2030 due to AI capabilities. Organizations should measure AI’s impact by considering AI-human collaboration rather than AI productivity alone. Decisions being made in businesses are evolving, and Artificial Intelligence is the driving force behind these developments. Agentic AI is on the horizon, and business decisions may soon be made automatically with little human oversight. We must understand what decisions are best made with AI and what decisions can be made with AI collaboration, but with human oversight. Decision intelligence is the backbone of these decisions and is evolving rapidly.
The Role of Decision Intelligence in Supply Chain Operations
In the afternoon, Elizabeth Baker from Deloitte highlighted a frozen food manufacturer $1.1 million annual cost reduction by optimizing deployment planning and global balancing. Decision Intelligence (DI) was employed as a strategic approach to help companies optimize operations and accelerate the realization of business value.
The company faced the common challenge of ensuring that the right products were stationed at the right distribution centers (DCs) at the right time to meet shifting customer demand, while minimizing unnecessary and costly transfers between warehouses and DCs. By applying decision intelligence, they first clarified the business objective—reducing non-value-added transfers and aligned all stakeholders on specific financial goals and baseline measurements. The company then implemented AI-driven deployment planning and global balancing tools that provided real-time insights and improved decision-making. As a direct result of this clarity, intentional design, and transparent value measurement, the manufacturer achieved a $1.1 million reduction in annual spend, demonstrating the tangible business impact of decision intelligence in action.
Final Thoughts:
Decision intelligence is a technology category that integrates data, analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and automation into a continuous, feedback-driven loop to enhance the quality and speed of business decisions.
Aera’s decision intelligence framework supports three levels of decision modes depending on the company’s preferences.
- Decision support (Human in the loop)
- Decision Augmentation (Human in the loop)
- Decision Automation (Human out of the loop)
DI plays a fundamental role in the supply chain by shifting decision-making from reactive, human-centric processes to proactive, data-driven, and automated systems. Supply chains are fundamentally a series of interconnected decisions from what to buy, when to make, where to store, and how to ship. DI uses real-time data, advanced analytics, AI, and automation to make these decisions faster, more accurate, and more aligned with overall business goals.
In an era of constant disruptions and ever-shifting geopolitics, decision intelligence can equip companies with information and tools to navigate todays global supply chain.
