How AT&T achieved “the best year ever" for several supply chain KPIs

One of the clearest transformation case studies at the recent Gartner Planning Summit in Denver came from Dennis Hodgkins, AVP Supply Chain Planning & Logistics at AT&T, who walked through how the company rebuilt its network planning capabilities on the o9 Digital Brain.

Rather than focusing on technology for its own sake, Dennis framed AT&T’s journey as a response to structural problems: planning at massive scale on legacy tools, inconsistent demand signals, and limited visibility across a complex materials network.

“Our transformation started… right after COVID,” he said. The crisis brought recognition and funding, but more importantly, “we looked really not just at our planning system… but holistically [at the] problems that we have with planning.”

What Sparked AT&T’s o9 Planning Initiative?

By the end of 2020, AT&T’s network organization—responsible for infrastructure equipment across wireless, broadband, business, and core network—was running into the limits of its existing processes.

“Our planning system… was billions of dollars done in Excel spreadsheets. Right? Kinda wild,” Dennis told the audience.

Several issues converged:

• Overreliance on spreadsheets: Planning at the scale of AT&T’s network build was happening in Excel, with all the constraints that implies.
• Inconsistent demand signals: “The data that we had… was very inconsistent, unstructured,” he said. Field organizations across the country fed demand in different ways, making it difficult to trust or aggregate.
• Inventory and materials inefficiencies: Construction and field teams often requested more equipment than needed “and [were] creating artificial shortages.”
• Limited visibility across demand, supply, and inventory: Weekly data updates meant that by the time planners worked with the numbers, “that data is already a few days to a week old before you even get it.”

Before deploying a new planning platform, the team first targeted these structural issues: standardizing client processes, improving inventory accuracy, and tightening controls around how equipment was requested and deployed. That groundwork, Dennis said, ensured AT&T would “get the biggest bang for the buck with our o9 deployment.”

The Transformation Program: Building on the o9 Digital Brain

AT&T’s rollout of the o9 Digital Brain came in multiple phases, aligned to distinct parts of the network business.

The company began with wireless planning in 2021, implementing demand planning first and then supply planning over a roughly 15-month cycle. It then added an allocation capability to match available equipment with customer orders during periods of scarcity, replacing manual allocation teams.

Next came wireline planning, which Dennis described as essentially a separate ecosystem: “Two really different client bases, systems that feed them, and logistics supply chains as well. So we had to separate almost as two different entities.”

Most recently, AT&T deployed spares planning for wireless, moving that process onto the o9 platform as well.

From Siloed Files to an Integrated Planning Platform

The move away from Excel was not simply a tool replacement. It fundamentally changed how data and decisions flowed.

“Now our data is not aged, it’s not scattered, it’s all in one place,” Dennis said. The system is “updated every day, and for certain things, it’s updated multiple times a day.”

That real-time access allowed planners to:

• See demand shifts as they happened
• Quickly identify supplier delays or PO date pushes
• Act on exception reports instead of digging for signals in spreadsheets

Process Redesign and Integrated Planning

One notable organizational change was the tighter integration of demand and supply planning.

Previously, misalignment led to familiar tension: “There’s no more finger pointing on, ‘Well, the demand planner said that, but they were wrong. That’s why I overbought,’… and vice versa,” he remarked.

Now, demand and supply planners “are together joined at the hip… we have them on the same team now,” Dennis added. Supply planners can see issues in the demand plan in near-real time and are expected to go back and resolve them with their counterparts.

Establishing a Center of Excellence

A critical component of the program was the creation of a Center of Excellence.

Dennis outlined the sequence:

• First, AT&T identified and heavily involved its “best and brightest, [its] experts” in designing the system and data flows.
• Those subject matter experts “then became the leaders of our CoE in the future.”
• Over time, both IT and business teams built competency in o9, enabling a growing degree of self-service.

“We’re able to do things in o9 without engaging IT or without engaging o9 at times,” he said.

One example: the CoE designed a safeguard that prevents large, unjustified POs from being automatically placed. “If it’s over a certain threshold now, we have a report that says it can’t be placed unless it’s approved. That report was built through CoE,” Dennis noted.

This model also helped with funding and continuous enhancement. Rather than seeking a budget for every discrete improvement, AT&T can justify ongoing “keeping best in class funding… just annually to do these kinds of things.”

Key Learnings

Several themes from AT&T’s experience stood out for planners in the room.

The Platform’s Role in Integrating Demand and Supply

Dennis repeatedly pointed to integrated demand and supply planning as one of the most important outcomes.

“Demand and supply planning integration… is one of the biggest advantages we got from this,” he said. The shared platform, shared data, and shared organizational alignment significantly reduced disconnects and drove more constructive collaboration.

The Importance of a Strong CoE and Internal Ownership

Dennis put considerable emphasis on involving planners and experts early and giving them ownership:

“The importance of getting your best and brightest… involved heavily in designing the system and the requirements… was key.”

That early involvement translated directly into better adoption and smoother rollout. “I’ve never seen an implementation go more smoothly. I’ve never seen a better adoption rate than we’ve had here,” he said, citing 27 years at AT&T.

Governance, Metrics, and Behavior Change

The transformation wasn’t only about central planning. Process adherence in the field also had to improve, particularly around hoarding behavior and last-minute changes.

AT&T addressed this with aligned processes and shared metrics with its “clients” (internal network and construction teams). The company began reporting performance across markets and teams.

“It was amazing how quick those red ones were no longer red,” Dennis observed, underscoring how transparency and consistent measurement supported behavior change over time.

The Value Delivered

The transformation has delivered both quantitative and qualitative benefits.

Forecast Accuracy and Planning Quality

Dennis reported that AT&T achieved “over twenty percent increase right off the bat in forecast accuracy.”

Freed from manually managing spreadsheets and macros, planners could invest time in understanding drivers of demand, spending more time with clients and less with files.

Cycle Time Reduction and Automation

Purchase order creation, once a fully manual exercise in Oracle, has been streamlined:

“You go from manually putting each one in, which takes you about a minute or so, down to a few seconds with a couple of clicks.”

Dennis added that this process is now simple enough that “we’ll look at where we can automate that in the future because it is so simple.”

Enhanced Visibility and Exception Management

With all relevant data housed in o9, the team now has exception reports that flag upcoming problems:

• Supplier delivery pushes
• Demand spikes
• Upcoming shortages

Previously, AT&T might not see these until a weekly refresh, by which time it could be too late. “Now we have the data in real time. We can take action on it immediately and figure out what it may take to mitigate the problem,” Dennis said.

Inventory, Shortages, and Capital Efficiency

Better planning and safety stock strategies have translated directly to operational and financial benefits:

“Better planning… gives you less shortages, a lower overall inventory level, less over buying of equipment… by reducing waste, reducing your capital… and then deferring cash.”

On the wireless side in particular, he described the past year as a standout: “Far and away the best year we’ve ever had from an on-time delivery perspective, low inventory level perspective, and low shortage level perspective.”

Internally, the program was dubbed Project Unicorn; a nod to the skepticism that it could be funded and executed successfully. “Nobody ever believed we’d be able to do it,” Dennis said. That skepticism, it seems, has been largely put to rest.

What’s Next? AI and the Next Phase of Transformation

Looking ahead, AT&T is now evaluating how to build on this foundation with AI and automation.

“I don’t think anybody’s gonna be surprised by the two letters… A and I,” Dennis said. The focus now is understanding “how we can use what o9 is starting to have available from an AI perspective and [where] we want to invest first to get the biggest bang for the buck.”

Dennis echoed a point made earlier in the day at the summit: rather than building everything internally, AT&T expects its planning platform partner to lead on AI capabilities.

“Making sure that the o9 planning [platform]… is in the best position to develop those kinds of tools from an AI perspective… than us trying to do it on our own,” he noted.

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