Earlier this year, we kicked off 2026 with INFORMS President Mark Lewis, talking about his vision for the year ahead.

Now, just after the INFORMS Analytics+ Conference – his first major event as president – we're checking back in to reflect on what we've seen so far, what stood out, and what's still ahead for the INFORMS community.

In this episode, we're diving into something every one of us experiences - but may not always think about strategically: customer relationships. Why do we stay loyal to some brands and leave others after one frustrating interaction? How are analytics and AI helping companies predict churn, personalize experiences, and build trust in a world where customers have more power than ever before?

Helping tackle these questions is Ankit Agrawal, whose work sits at the intersection of analytics, customer experience, and business strategy. We'll talk about what companies are getting wrong about loyalty, how CRM has evolved, and why the future of customer relationships may depend as much on empathy as it does on algorithms.

In the final epiosde of our special series highlighting the finalists of the 2026 Franz Edelman Award, members of the team from Microsoft share special insight on their project, which is transforming how global cloud infrastructure is supplied and delivered.

As demand for cloud services continues to grow, the logistics behind delivering the hardware that powers data centers have become increasingly complex. To meet this challenge, Microsoft developed a platform – the Intelligent Fulfillment Service – that combines machine learning, mathematical optimization, and generative and agentic AI to automate global shipment

This latest episode in the mini-series highlighting the 2026 Franz Edelman Award finalist featues members of the team from Google, whose project is advancing a new approach to managing energy and computing resources across the company's global data center network.

Data centers power the digital services we rely on every day, but they also require enormous amounts of energy. To address this challenge, Google developed a first-of-its-kind system that intelligently shifts flexible computing workloads across both time and location to take advantage of cleaner energy sources.

In this episode, we'll hear more about how this innovative system works and the impact it's having.

Each year, organizations from around the world demonstrate how advanced analytics and operations research are solving real problems at massive scale – and are recognized and celebrated by the INFORMS community with the Franz Edelman Award competition.

Joining me today are members of the team from NVIDIA, a global leader in accelerated computing and artificial intelligence.

As companies grow and their products evolve, the demand–supply networks that support them often become incredibly complex. To stay ahead of this complexity and remain responsive in fast-moving markets, organizations need smarter and more adaptive supply chain management systems.

To tackle this challenge, NVIDIA developed an AI-powered planning platform designed to maintain stability, responsiveness, and agility across their global supply chain. The platform brings together a full stack of advanced technologies, all working together to support intelligent supply chain planning at scale.

Today, we'll hear more about how this powerful combination of AI and optimization is transforming supply chain decision-making.

Each year, organizations from around the world demonstrate how advanced analytics and operations research are solving real problems at massive scale – from retail and logistics to healthcare systems, public services, and the complex networks that keep our world moving.

Joining me today are members of the team from India's Department of Food and Public Distribution (DFPD), working in partnership with the United Nations World Food Programme in India and the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.

Together, they developed Anna Chakra, an operations research–based decision support system designed to strengthen India's Public Distribution System by optimizing the logistics that move food across the country.

Today we'll hear how this ambitious project came together – and how operations research is helping transform food distribution at national scale.

Each year, organizations from around the world compete in the INFORMS Franz Edelman Award competition, demonstrating how advanced analytics and O.R. are solving real problems at massive scale.

In this episode, members of the team from Chewy, the largest online pet retailer and pharmacy in the United States, share how they tackled a challenge that sounds simple on the surface but becomes incredibly complex at scale: replenishment.

Using a science-driven suite of models, supported by a custom engineering platform and continuous analytics monitoring, the team transformed how Chewy manages purchase orders, safety stock, and inventory placement – all while accounting for unreliable data, supply uncertainty, and vendor constraints.

The result? Improved inventory placement, fewer split shipments, shorter shipping distances, and meaningful financial impact in a thin-margin industry.

Each year, finalists in the Franz Edelman Award Competition demonstrate how advanced analytics and operations research are solving real problems at massive scale – from the products we buy and the packages we receive to the healthcare we rely on and the policies that shape our communities.

Joining me today are members of the team from ECCO, the globally recognized footwear brand known for its vertically integrated supply chain and retail operations.

Managing inventory across hundreds of retail locations around the world is a massive logistical challenge. Historically, store replenishment decisions were made manually, which often led to inconsistent ordering, operational inefficiencies, and missed opportunities to optimize inventory placement.

To address this, ECCO's data & AI team developed a powerful analytics system that uses large-scale stochastic mixed-integer programming to automate store replenishment decisions across their global retail network.