My Brain's Back Online: TechEx Amsterdam & The AI Reality Check

Two decades of watching technology evolve from something you plugged into the wall with a satisfying "thunk" to an invisible force that can now probably predict what I'm going to eat for breakfast.

I just spent one great (and slightly exhausting) day at TechEx Europe in Amsterdam, and it feel like a "Surprise-Surprise" what is new in the market???. I bumped into faces I hadn't seen since I left Maersk, and saw what the market is actually, truly doing with AI, IoT, Big Data, and the whole tech alphabet soup.

And here’s the kicker, the big plot twist no one in the AI echo chamber saw coming: The floor wasn't crawling with an army of AI-first companies. The prevailing scent wasn't the ozone from hot GPUs; it was the faint, practical aroma of IoT devices and—thank heavens—security. Turns out, before we teach the robots poetry, we need to make sure the door locks are smart and nobody's stealing the data flowing through them. Go figure.

The Man Who Brought Clarity to Chaos

But let's talk about the speakers, because that's where the real intellectual fireworks happened. The highlight, the true "aha!" moment that made my 20-year-old copywriter heart beat a little faster, was Altaf Patel. The VP, Global Head of Business Intelligence and AI for BI capability. I know, a title that could stop a clock, but trust me, what he and his team are doing is nothing short of a game-changer.

He showcased how they’re using AI to provide information—the right information—in real-time to everyone from the C-Suite down to the regional field teams.

I swear, a chill ran down my spine, and I was transported back to my old company. Do you remember those leadership meetings? A simple question would come up: "What are the numbers?" And then the ensuing clown car would roll out. Finance would give you $5M. Sales would offer $10M. Marketing would chirp in with "Wait, based on the new dashboard, it's $8M." Five to ten different answers because everyone had their own spreadsheet, their own definition of a "lead," and their own little silo of truth.

What Altaf demonstrated is the technological equivalent of finally giving a whole organization one single, universal calculator. No more debates about whose numbers are right. Just clarity, speed, and action. That's not a small tweak; that's corporate evolution.

The PepsiCo Playbook: AI for Survival

And speaking of massive corporate evolution, the conversation naturally drifted to the companies who are actually putting this AI to work on a global, mind-boggling scale. PepsiCo came up, and what they’re doing isn't just theory—it's a case study in AI-for-survival.

Forget making the perfect salty snack—they’re using AI to:

1. Stop Supply Chain Risk Cold: Their supply chain is a beast, spanning continents and millions of logistics decisions. AI is helping them move beyond simple tracking to predictive analytics. This means they can spot a potential raw material shortage, a shipping bottleneck, or a geopolitical tremor before it blows up. They're not just reacting to chaos; they're stress-testing their entire global nervous system in real time, dramatically increasing resilience.

2. Turbocharge Sales and Shelf Life: AI is now their best field sales rep. By analyzing mountains of shopper data, seasonality, and local events, AI helps them optimize everything from delivery routes to shelf placement. Sales teams know exactly what product to stock, where to put it, and what promotion to run, creating the "perfect store" scenario, which results in better sales, less waste, and happier retailers.

3. Drive Relentless Improvement: AI is embedded in their operations, too. It's in the manufacturing plants using machine learning to detect the perfect texture of a chip or predicting equipment failure for predictive maintenance—saving hundreds of thousands in downtime. It even helps farmers by providing data on soil, weather, and irrigation to optimize their crops.

This is the power of a unified, AI-driven data strategy. It eliminates the "different answers" problem that Altaf Patel highlighted, and replaces it with a singular, optimized plan that runs from the potato farm to the consumer's couch.

Forget "Digital Transformation." This is the Speed of Sound.

This brings me to my final, slightly more urgent takeaway. This isn't just a cool new tool; it's a fast-track to competitive survival.

We all lived through the agonizing, decade-long slog known as "Digital Transformation." It was like watching a sloth try to learn breakdancing—slow, awkward, and often ending in frustration. Companies spent years and billions just trying to digitize their fax machines and move data to the cloud.

This AI adoption? It's not that.

This is a Technology Engagement that companies must embrace with the urgency of someone realizing they've left the stove on. You don't have years to form a committee, hire a VP of Generative Vibes, and "explore possibilities." Your competitors—and I'm looking at every major CPG, logistics, and retail company—are already knitting this AI capability into their core operations.

If you don't take the steps to onboard your full organization—from the data to the executive team—onto a single, AI-powered truth engine, others won't just outperform you. They will eat you alive.

See you next year, Amsterdam. I’ll be the guy checking if the coffee machine is AI-optimized yet.