Supply Chain Management in the Agentic Era

The global supply chain is the circulatory system of the modern economy. When it flows, business thrives. When it clogs, revenue stops. But for decades, the software managing this critical infrastructure has remained surprisingly rigid, forcing human workers to bridge the gaps manually.

This guide explores what supply chain management really means today, specific supply chain challenges faced across ASEAN and how solutions like Agentforce Supply Chain help businesses automate the manual and repetitive operational tasks.

At its core, supply chain management is the coordination of the entire flow of goods, information and finances associated with a product or service. The supply chain management process starts from the procurement of raw materials and ends with the final delivery of the product to the consumer.

Effective supply chain management is not just about logistics; it is the backbone of business success and customer satisfaction.

In a digital-first world, supply chain management includes:

• Planning: Predicting demand to ensure supply meets market needs.
• Sourcing: Selecting suppliers and managing relationships.
• Manufacturing: Creating the product.
• Delivery and logistics: Getting the product to the customer efficiently.
• Returns: Handling the reverse flow of goods (a critical component of customer experience).

ASEAN represents one of the most exciting and dynamic, but also challenging supply chain environments in the world. Unlike major single landmasses seen in other supply chain markets like the US and EU, ASEAN is an archipelago-heavy region characterised by diverse regulations, varying infrastructure maturity, and complex island logistics.

In 2024, the region saw a major shift toward supply chain resilience. Following years of global disruption, businesses in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam are now prioritising visibility over pure ‘just-in-time’ efficiency .

However, there are a range of regional challenges and opportunities presented by this shift, including:

• Fragmentation: One example of fragmentation across ASEAN supply chains is seen in moving goods from Jakarta to Manila. This involves navigating different customs regimes and logistical hurdles that don't exist in single-market territories. According to the ASEAN Investment Report 2025 , these non-tariff barriers and varying customs standards remain the primary bottleneck for regional integration, often increasing ‘dwelling time’ at ports significantly compared to global averages.
• Ecommerce boom: The explosion of digital commerce in Southeast Asia has put immense pressure on ‘last-mile’ delivery and inventory accuracy. The e-Conomy SEA 2024 Report highlights that as video commerce and digital sales surge, the logistics infrastructure is straining to meet consumer demands for speed, with logistics costs in some member states still hovering between 14-20% of GDP.
• Digital maturity: While Singapore leads in digital adoption, other ASEAN markets are rapidly catching up, seeking cloud-native solutions to leapfrog legacy infrastructure. Research supports the trend that emerging markets in the region are bypassing the traditional ‘server room’ era entirely, moving directly to agile cloud platforms to close the gap, a key pillar of the ASEAN Digital Masterplan 2025 .

As a result of these challenges and opportunities, business leaders in APAC are seeking a ‘Control Tower’ view — a single source of truth that spans borders and time zones. Without it, regional growth is capped by logistical friction. Market analysis by Mordor Intelligence projects the APAC Control Tower market to grow at a compound annual growth rate of more than 13% through to 2030, driven specifically by this need to manage complex, fragmented supply networks.

Why should ASEAN business leaders prioritise modernising their supply chain? Moving to an agentic, digital-first approach delivers four critical advantages:

• Enhanced efficiency and cost reduction: In a region where logistics costs can consume 14–20% of GDP , efficiency is not just a metric; it is a survival strategy. Modern supply chain management reduces redundancy, optimises inventory levels (preventing overstocking) and identifies the most cost-effective logistics routes instantly.
• Agility and resilience: The China +1 strategy , a supply chain diversification approach where businesses maintain a presence in China while expanding operations to other countries, and frequent geopolitical shifts across ASEAN can require businesses to pivot their goods, services and supplier sourcing strategies overnight. A modern supply chain provides the data visibility needed to switch suppliers or shipping routes without disrupting the entire operation.
• Improved customer satisfaction: With the ecommerce boom, customers expect Amazon-level speed and transparency . This means to be effective, supply chain management needs to ensure products are available when promised. They also need to make it possible for customers to track their products in real-time. Done well, supply chain management turns logistics from a cost centre into a real competitive edge. At the same time, retailers still face plenty of challenges: demand swings, disruptions and complicated inventory networks. In the retail industry, effective supply chain management and operations helps businesses anticipate and address these issues, ensuring product availability and consistently meeting customer expectations.

If supply chain management is so critical, why is managing it still so painful? The problem lies in the back-office and mid-office software dilemma.

Most enterprises run on massive, legacy Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. These systems are designed as one-size-fits-all solutions. They are powerful systems of record, but they are terrible at handling the nuance of your specific business processes off the shelf.

If you want to automate a specific process in a traditional legacy system, you are often looking at an ineffective scenario:

• Time: 3 to 6 months to change a single field or workflow.
• Cost: Upwards of $250,000 for significant customisations.

Because the software is too rigid to change, businesses rely on people to fill the gaps. If you look behind the curtain of a typical supply chain department, you see talented professionals acting like ‘hamsters on a wheel.’

Historically in the “hamster wheel” supply chain, humans had to manually extract data, send emails to suppliers, chase invoices and update spreadsheets manually.

They did the work the software should have been doing and acted as the manual ‘glue’ between disconnected systems. This is not only inefficient but also burns out your best talent.

To fix the problems of the “hamster wheel” and associated burnout, the solution isn't necessarily to rip out and replace everything in your existing supply chain, but to layer agile, cloud-based solutions on top of existing operations to gain visibility and flexibility.

To bring supply chain management into the AI-driven digital era, Salesforce has expanded and elevated its operations portfolio. While many still associate Salesforce as a CRM business, the Agentforce 360 Platform has evolved into a powerhouse for operations.

Modern supply chain management isn't just about making things; it's about selling and servicing them.

• Agentforce Commerce (formerly Commerce Cloud) provides real-time inventory visibility. You can better manage merchandise sell-through and prevent the dreaded out-of-stock message by connecting demand signals directly to your supply planning. It allows businesses to accept pre-orders ahead of shopping seasons, smoothing out demand planning.
• When a shipment is delayed, who is the first to know? Usually, an angry customer. By integrating supply chain data into Agentforce Service (formerly Service Cloud), support agents have visibility into order status, turning a potential crisis into a proactive service moment.

Right now, across ASEAN, supply chain management is witnessing the next leap forward.

Positioned as the world's first fully automated supply chain manager, Agentforce Supply Chain uses AI-native technology to automate complex business processes. Built on the groundbreaking technology of Regrello, which was recently acquired by Salesforce, Agentforce Supply Chain moves beyond automation to agents. It turns every process into an agentic workflow.

The magic of Agentforce Supply Chain lies in its ability to ingest unstructured data. In the past, defining a workflow required coding. However, with Agentforce Supply Chain, you can feed the system:

• A PDF of a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).
• A Word document outlining supplier rules.
• A diagram or whiteboard photo of a process.

AI reads this documentation and instantly builds the workflow for you — transforming static documents into active, running software.

During the unveiling of these capabilities, Dell was highlighted as a prime example of an Agentic Enterprise.

Dell utilised Agentforce Supply Chain to revolutionise its Supplier Onboarding process. Previously a manual tangle of emails and forms, the system now autonomously manages the interaction with new suppliers, collecting necessary data, verifying compliance and orchestrating the setup — freeing Dell's team to focus on strategic sourcing rather than administrative data entry.

• Automated supplier onboarding: Minimise back-and-forth emails.
• Intelligent invoicing: Agents can read, match, and process invoices against orders.
• Logistics coordination: Real-time visibility into shipping and logistics decisions.
• Rapid adaptability: Change a workflow in minutes by updating the instruction, not months of coding.

The era of the ‘hamster wheel’ supply chain is ending. The friction of manual spreadsheets, fragmented ASEAN logistics and rigid legacy software is being replaced by a new layer of intelligence.

By leveraging AI-first solutions like Agentforce Supply Chain, businesses can finally bridge the gap between their back-office systems and the real world. Whether it's ingesting a PDF to build a workflow instantly or automating the complexity of supplier onboarding like Dell, the future of supply chain management is agentic, automated and agile.