The Practical Path to AI-Ready TMS: Embellishments that Work Today

The promise of AI in supply chains is obvious. You’d think every enterprise would be racing to implement it. But a Gartner survey shows only 23% of supply chain leaders even have a formal AI strategy today¹. Meanwhile, another study​​ from Capgemini shows that AI has already been shown to cut logistics costs by up to 25% and reduce inventory by nearly 20%².

So we have this odd gap: everyone nods along about the potential, but almost no one has taken the first real step.

That’s why the future won’t start with fully autonomous agents. The leap is too big. The first step is smaller and more practical: AI Embellishments. They’re lightweight enhancements embedded into everyday workflows. They don’t replace human judgment; they reduce friction, highlight what matters, and make decisions faster. One small change compounds into the next. And that’s how teams climb from where they are today to AI agent-driven TMS.

Design Principles for Smarter Workflows

At Locus, every embellishment is built around three simple ideas. The first is clarity. Complex data is only useful if people can understand it quickly. By translating dense charts and tables into something instantly readable, embellishments remove the cognitive load that slows teams down.

The second is relevance. Not every data point deserves equal attention. What matters is surfacing the signals that have real operational impact and filtering out the noise. Embellishments are designed to highlight what’s critical in the moment, so managers spend less time searching and more time acting.

The third is efficiency. Workflows should feel natural, not mechanical. Instead of requiring long sequences of manual steps, embellishments introduce intuitive, AI-driven interactions that minimize friction and make the system easier to use.

Because they are modular, these enhancements are simple to adopt, easy to trust, and scalable across workflows. They embed intelligence into daily operations without forcing wholesale change, improving decisions in the present while preparing teams for the future.

Two recent rollouts at Locus show this most clearly: Smart Filtering, which makes finding what you need as simple as asking for it, and AI Summarization, which turns complex dashboards into clear answers.

Smart Filtering: Finding What You Need, the Simple Way

Smart Filtering tackles a common bottleneck. In most systems, isolating something as simple as “unassigned orders in Zone B” requires multiple clicks and precise field matches. 

Smart Filtering replaces this with plain-language interaction. Users can type or speak a request, such as “Show me delayed COD orders in Zone A,” and the system applies the correct filters automatically.

The impact of Smart Filtering is immediate:

• Operations teams focus quickly on urgent tasks, exceptions, or SLA risks.
• Planners explore scenarios in real-time using natural query filtering.
• Support teams resolve customer issues faster, without analyst intervention.

AI Summarization: Turning Dashboards into Clear Answers

Dashboards are powerful, but not always accessible. Managers often spend hours slicing charts, explaining anomalies, or waiting for analyst support. AI Summarization compresses this effort into a single click. KPI charts, orders, or tasks are translated into clear, natural-language insights that highlight:

• What’s happening: the core outcomes right now.
• Why it’s happening: the drivers, anomalies, or shifts behind those outcomes.
• What patterns are emerging: the trends over time that show direction.
• What to do next: the recommended action to improve results.
  

By translating structured data into natural language, AI Summarization reduces complexity and free up time for action. It also results in faster alignment across teams and earlier detection of risks, like SLA breaches.

Small Upgrades, Big Signals

Individually, embellishments may feel like simple upgrades. But collectively, they’re signals of what’s to come. Over time, these micro-enhancements stack up into an ecosystem of AI agents that can plan, monitor, and resolve across the procure-to-pay journey — always with humans in the loop.

The thing is, enterprises don’t need to wait for the promise of AI agents to materialize. The future begins with small, trusted steps that make teams faster and decisions sharper right now. These steps compound, leading naturally to more intelligent, agent-driven operations. And that is the future of resilient supply chains and TMS solutions.

If you’d like to see how these capabilities work in practice, our experts can walk you through a live demo.

References

1. Gartner Survey Shows Just 23% of Supply Chain Organizations Have a Formal AI Strategy.
2. AI in action: How gen AI and agentic AI redefine business operations