Aera Technology

Aera Technology is a software company offering business automation functions. The company was founded in 1999 by Shariq Mansoor, who serves as CTO; the company is presided by CEO Frederic Laluyaux.

The company uses machine learning and business domain expertise to uncover risks and opportunities and continuously improve customers' financial and operational performance.Aera's platform uses real-time data and artificial intelligence to accurately predict business risks and opportunities. The platform's real-time intelligence service is aimed at improving speed, quality, and impact of decisions.

Aera started collaboration with Microsoft in May 2021, announcing plans to integrate Microsoft Azure Digital Twins with Aera's Cognitive Operating System. The Azure Digital Twins platform enables next-gen IoT solution creation that can model real-world connections. Aera's Cognitive Operating System is a cloud platform that is capable of analyzing large amounts of transactional data and automatically implementing optimal decision-making protocols. The collaboration will also implement Azure Digital Twins technology into Aera's Cognitive Data Layer, which crawls hard to find subject metrics and automatically adds their trend data to enterprise analysis.

Aera also partners with Kearney, a global consultancy, announcing in February 2021 that Aera's cognitive automation system would be integrated into Kearney's Sense and Pivot supply chain management solution.

Aera has raised $173,700,000 USD to date through eight funding rounds. A Series C funding round was announced in June 2019 and raised $50 million USD; the round was led by DFJ Growth and also included existing investors NewView Capital and Georgian. New Enterprise Associates led Aera's $50 million Series B round in June 2017.

Aera Technology provides a number of services that they call "cognitive skills" in its platform suite, in addition to its Cognitive Operating System and Cognitive Data Layer.

Aera announced the release of its Cognitive Operating System on September 24, 2020. The cloud platform uses cognitive automation to give businesses automated and agile decision-making protocols. Cognitive Operating System works by augmenting human decision-making through the use of a centralized intelligence center that applies data crawling, machine learning, and industry models to give real-time business recommendations and predictive outcomes.

Aera Forecast Skill leverages machine learning algorithms that correlate data from historical sales, promotions, the market, and external factors to autonomously generate an accurate demand forecast with minimal to no human intervention.

Aera Promotion Skill monitors the competition and market trends, analyzes historical data, and recommends plans to perfect your promotions.

Aera Order Skill recommends accurate order promises, allocations, and production plans to improve available-to-promise capabilities with real-time fulfillment visibility.

Aera Inventory Skill continuously balances capital investment constraints and service-level goals while taking demand and supply volatility into account.

Aera Procurement Skill integrates procurement strategy and automates daily procurement processes to enable a highly efficient and streamlined procurement process.

Aera Digital Control Tower Skill continuously monitors the business to identify and predict demand, working capital, and cost risks and then prescribes appropriate actions to mitigate or overcome these risks.

Aera Logistics Skill intelligently optimizes shipping networks by uncovering opportunities for more efficient transportation, identifying bottlenecks, and automating shipment delay resolution to ensure customers receive the complete shipment on time.