Accenture has made an investment in Aera Technology to integrate agentic decision intelligence into global supply chains. The partnership aims to provide real-time, AI-led decision-making for the consumer goods, life sciences, and energy sectors.

The collaboration combines Aera’s decision data models with Accenture’s supply chain services. Aera’s software agents are designed to monitor operational changes, improve demand decisions, and execute actions across procurement and finance. The systems learn from outcomes to adjust performance over time, aiming to reduce costs and increase resilience.

Accenture research indicates that while 25% of companies have started moving toward autonomous supply chains, the median maturity level remains at 16% on a scale where 100% represents full autonomy. Most current supply chain operations still rely on fragmented, manual processes that struggle to manage frequent disruptions.

“The speed at which decisions are required to balance costs and services is outstripping what manual, siloed processes can sustain,” said Chris McDivitt, global lead for autonomous supply chains at Accenture. He added that the partnership would allow supply chains to sense changes before disruptions occur and execute decisions automatically under human oversight.

The Hershey Company is among the first to implement these AI-enabled systems. Terms of the investment by Accenture Ventures were not disclosed.