In terms of staying on top of new resource developments for procurement and supply markets research, this philosophy comes to mind from one of my mother’s best friends: “You rest, you rust.” Here are selected new resource announcements in current active areas to note for the second quarter of 2025 (April – June).
Agentic AI
New launch announcements continue to pick up. Examples:
Resilinc – Resilinc unveiled its Agentic AI platform in addition to the newly rebranded web domain, Resilinc.ai. “Unlike traditional dashboards or manual portals, Resilinc’s Agentic AI platform transforms how organizations operate by deploying intelligent agents that proactively detect disruptions, recommend responses, and even act autonomously under governed conditions.”
Zip – Zip introduced a brand-new category: Agentic Procurement Orchestration and has launched 50+ AI agents “designed to automate specific, manual tasks like validating data, surfacing risk against company policy, scanning contracts, and ensuring compliance within procurement, legal, IT and security.”
Pactum – As part of expanding its AI agentic capabilities, Pactum launched its new AI agent, Price Lists for Direct Materials. “Raw material costs continue to increase over time, especially across large SKU volumes. With our Price Lists agent, every price change is visible, every opportunity is actionable, and every negotiation is handled autonomously.”
Thomson Reuters – Thomson Reuters announced its launch of CoCounsel for tax, audit, and accounting professionals, which operates inside real workflows to complete complex assignments. Agents “are refined by legal and tax, audit, and accounting experts to reason in alignment with professional standards and best practices.”
Coupa – Coupa introduced a new multiagent AI portfolio of solutions that builds on its first Coupa Navi foundation. New Navi agents include: Coupa Navi Analytics Agent, Coupa Navi Knowledge Agent, and Coupa Navi Bring Your Own AI Agent. Coupa’s two new Navi Supply Chain Agents include Navi Modeling Agent, and Supply Chain Skill in the Knowledge Base Agent.
Blue Yonder – Blue Yonder launched several new solutions that include new Cognitive Solutions and five critical artificial intelligence (AI) agents for supply chain. Blue Yonder’s AI agents include: Inventory Ops Agent, Shelf Ops Agent, Logistics Ops Agent, Warehouse Ops Agent, and Network Ops Agent.
Oro Labs – Oro Labs unveiled new agentic AI capabilities with the latest AI agents built to handle “time-consuming risk and compliance tasks that include risk reviews, fraud detection, global tax compliance, sustainability compliance, anti-bribery compliance, and legal reviews.”
Certified B Corporations
B Lab is the non profit organization that sets the high standards for B Corp Certification, which is a designation that demonstrates a business is meeting high social and environmental standards ranging from employee benefits and charitable giving to supply chain practices and input materials. There are currently over 9,940 Certified B Corporations in more than 104 countries and over 160 industries (website), representing ~ 54% increase in growth in less than two years.
Precoro – Precoro, a procurement automation platform provider, announced its Certified B Corporation designation, stating “B Corp Certification goes beyond a product or service. It’s a rigorous, independent assessment of a company’s operations, from governance and employee well-being to environmental footprint and customer impact.”
DPW – Global tech ecosystem and event provider, DPW, announced it is officially a Certified B Corporation. “We didn’t pursue certification to be part of a trend. We did it because it aligns with our purpose: To accelerate innovation and impact in procurement and supply chain by acting as superconnectors – uniting bold thinkers to build a global movement of transformational ideas and action.”
Other supply chain and procurement related companies receiving the certification in the recent time period include Climate Essentials (carbon management software ), Advion B.V (logistics), Batch.Works (circular manufacturing), Scend (3PL), GTC+ (horticulture and agro-food consultancy), Help2Comply (SMB sustainability certifications), and Mirihi Inversions (strategic consulting/sustainable distribution) (selected list).
Geopolitical Risk and Trade
The following announcements illustrate how rising geopolitical disputes are affecting Global trade. Geopolitical risk awareness services and risk scoring solutions are not exclusive to the supply chain risk community as recent releases illustrate.
Bloomberg – Bloomberg launched geopolitical country scores for 7 million companies and 245 countries, which enables risk managers and traders to identify 29 political, operational, security, cyber or maritime country-level threats impacting portfolios. The solution is built with Seerist’s geopolitical risk and security intelligence.
Hence Technologies – To help businesses and their legal counsel manage geopolitical uncertainties, Hence has unveiled Hence Global, an AI-powered platform that provides customized risk analysis and insights tailored to specific business roles. The platform aims to address “the unruly collision of politics, technology, and law” manifesting in shifting political landscapes and market volatility.
JPMorganChase – JPMorganChase launched its Center for Geopolitics, which is an advisory service to help clients navigate global business. “Calling out the war in Ukraine, terrorism in the Middle East, potential fragmentation in Europe and trade disputes with China, [CEO Jamie Dimon states] it is extremely important to recognize that security and economics are interconnected – ‘economic’ warfare has caused military warfare in the past.”
Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS) – HCSS, in collaboration with the Dutch World Trade Centers, launched the Geopolitical Annual Trade Risk Index, (GATRI). GATRI consolidates signals from around the world into a single, comprehensible score and provides real-time insights into how global disruptions may impact supply chains and trade flows.
Government Procurement Transformation
The UK and U.S. governments are each in the midst of developing transformative ways to streamline how technology, goods, and services are procured: one via a new digital marketplace and the other with a new overhaul strategy.
UK’s National Digital Exchange (NDX) – The UK government is developing a new digital marketplace to transform how government and public sector organizations procure technology. It will “centralize and simplify purchases by offering access to pre-approved technology solutions at nationally negotiated prices.” In addition, an AI-powered engine “will help match buyers with the right suppliers based on their specific needs” and allow users to rate and review the technology products and services they buy.
U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) – GSA has launched its OneGov Strategy to modernize how the federal government purchases goods and services. In the first phase, easier access to IT tools with standardized terms and pricing will be available. “Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) will benefit from a more direct and predictable engagement…The OneGov Strategy reflects a shift in how the federal government approaches buying what it needs—not as a series of isolated purchases, but as a shared enterprise.”
Professional Services
An emerging trend in the tax/accounting advisory space is surfacing and an AI transformation offering to note in the legal space highlights how professional services firms and providers are adapting to AI transformation changes in order to stay strong and competitive.
LexisNexis Legal & Professional and Harvey – This strategic alliance will integrate LexisNexis gen AI technology, primary law content, and Shepard’s Citations within the Harvey platform and advanced legal workflows will jointly be developed. Outsell observes, “LexisNexis and Harvey deal removes Harvey’s biggest weakness – the lack of access to proprietary legal content – by baking LexisNexis’s cases and statutes into Harvey’s AI app. The result is a powerful combination of a legacy content giant and a startup innovator that puts competitors on notice.”
Unity Advisory – Reflecting a budding trend, Unity Advisory, an UK tax, accounting, and M&A advisory firm, was recently launched and is being led by former EY and PwC senior executives. Steve Varley, chair of the company, states “The Big Four are a classy bunch of service providers, but people are looking for a proposition that is super client-centric, has really low administrative cost, is AI-led rather than based on legacy infrastructure and, crucially, has no conflicts.”
New Indexes
It wouldn’t be a resource update without a few new index listings.
Blue Center Index of Critical Supply Chain Disruptions – A cross-university team of faculty at Simon Business School, Yale, Princeton, and the University of Virginia launched the Blue Center Index of Critical Supply Chain Disruptions. “This new tool offers a near real-time view of global trade activity across an identified group of critical goods, making it possible to detect abnormalities and disruptions in the movement of key materials and products, often within just two weeks of occurrence.”
Silicon Data H100 Rental Index – Silicon Data launched the Silicon Data H100 Rental Index, a daily benchmark index for GPU rental pricing, published on Bloomberg terminals. “For too long, AI infrastructure pricing has been opaque and fragmented. This index is a first step toward turning GPU compute into a properly benchmarked, tradeable asset class.” The index is updated daily.
Dow’s Water Resilience Index – To understand water resilience, Dow is assessing four key factors: Water Supply & Supply Quality, Water Asset Management, Wastewater Discharge, and Climate & Weather. For their top 20 water-dependent sites, Dow will use an index to their target for ten of those sites to be water-resilient by 2030, and all to be water-resilient by 2050.
Image by oki andri sandjaya from Pixabay
