New Zealand Firms Turn to Agentic AI for Supply Chain Resilience

New Zealand's supply chains are vulnerable to disruptions, as evidenced by recent events such as Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the Ever Given's temporary blockage of the Suez Canal in 2021.

The country's economy relies heavily on exports, with $80 billion worth of goods shipped annually. However, most New Zealand organizations' procurement functions remain under-resourced, manually operated, and largely untouched by AI technology.

A new generation of agentic AI systems can carry out entire multi-step tasks, including discovering and vetting suppliers, preparing and assessing tenders, analyzing contracts and spending, tracking supplier performance, and continuously scanning for risk. These agents can work around the clock to compress detection time and provide capabilities previously available mainly to large companies.

The main barriers to implementing agentic AI are within businesses themselves, including fragmented data, outdated software, governance issues, trust in autonomous decision-making, security concerns, regulatory uncertainty, accountability, and auditability. Companies can buy capable solutions but still need people who understand how the technology works and can give AI agents more responsibility safely.