Amplifying Workforce Development

In a video interview with Pharma Commerce, Scott Tillman, Logility’s senior vice president of innovation, addresses the gap between high interest in generative AI (GenAI) and its relatively low adoption in supply chain-specific applications, as highlighted in Logility’s Supply Chain Horizons 2025 Market Report. He identified several key reasons for this disconnect.

First, many companies experience “paralysis by analysis” due to the rapidly evolving technology landscape. With so many options and an unclear starting point, organizations often hesitate to act. Tillman emphasized the importance of adopting an agile, iterative approach—developing, deploying, learning, and refining continuously—rather than seeking a perfect solution from the outset.

Second, he pointed out a cultural shift that needs to happen within organizations. Companies must become more comfortable with experimentation in software implementation, viewing it as a learning process rather than a one-time deployment. This mindset change is essential for successfully leveraging emerging technologies like GenAI.

Financial and technical barriers also play a role. Expertise in GenAI is both scarce and costly, and training models can be time-consuming. Organizations face a strategic decision: whether to build their own AI models or depend on third-party software vendors. Tillman noted that this debate is still in its early stages, and its outcome will shape how companies integrate GenAI into their operations.

Finally, he stressed that in the supply chain space, companies will increasingly depend on vendors like Logility to provide specialized expertise and value-driven use cases. These could include demand sensing, forecasting insights, and other prescriptive applications of GenAI tailored to business needs. Overall, Tillman advocated for a practical, phased approach to GenAI adoption, focusing on clear, impactful use cases rather than waiting for the perfect solution.

He also comments on some common misconceptions supply chain leaders might have about what it means to be “digitally optimized;” the role of automation and GenAI evolving in workforce development; how geopolitical or economic volatility can potentially reshape the way organizations prioritize supply chain investments; and much more.

A transcript of his conversation with PC can be found below.

PC: With talent retention cited as a key concern, how do you see the role of automation and GenAI evolving in workforce development—particularly in onboarding and reskilling efforts?

Tillman: There's a level of automation that's going to make onboarding much smoother and much more consistent. Imagine, you get into your first day in a role, there’re personalized messages, there're training modules, everything is consistent based on a process that's outlined by your HR department. It's not going to be so much who your mentor was the first day—it's going to be able to be more consistent.

You're still going to have to develop those personal relationships, but how you develop those and the tools that you have available to you will be consistent. From a reskilling standpoint—or just an ability to use GenAI to customize onboarding opportunities based on your particular skill set—if you go through a training class and you answer a certain set of questions, those questions are captured by AI. That AI can potentially recommend the next set of training that is required for you in a way that's capturing that data and make it very personalized to how you learn, and how you might answer certain questions. That type of customized training is going to allow companies to onboard resources much faster than what they have in the past.

I know from experience that I'm very much an auditory learner. I like to listen to things, repeat things. I'd much rather listen to a class than read a book or that portion of it. If you think about how GenAI can capture that type of information for individuals and then customize a training path for that individual that says, “hey, here's some videos for you to watch,” as opposed to somebody who might be more of a visual leaner, they might want more things around reading. It’s going to customize a path that I think will be based more on your personality, and it will help onboard those resources more quickly.