How AI and Process Intelligence enable supply chain managers to manage tariffs and build a more resilient value chain

Think about headline disruptions of recent years: COVID-19, Suez, Baltimore, Red Sea attacks. Or extreme weather events and shifting customer demand. They’re all examples of macroeconomic or geopolitical developments that have an acute impact on supply chains.

More than half of supply chain leaders (54%) now see disruptions as a day-to-day occurrence. Today, that volatility concerns tariffs, which are changing the global business environment tremendously, even beyond supply chains.

The imposition of sweeping tariffs on imported goods will have a profound impact on global supply chains. It’s a serious challenge for the stability and fluidity that supply chains need to operate effectively. And it’s a challenge supply chain leaders have got to figure out quickly, to keep their companies’ goods moving as cost effectively as possible.

How to start dealing with disruption

It’s vital to understand which parts of your organization and supply chain are affected. Only with this visibility can you explore corrective actions to deploy. In the case of tariff management, that could mean quickly mobilizing alternative suppliers, such as importing locally as opposed to from other countries.

But this can be complex. Think of a car manufacturer that’s sourced thousands of different parts from countries around the world. With various tariffs applied, the company needs a scalable answer to uninterrupted supply as well as calculating the impact on finished goods. And supply chain professionals have to make the transition seamless to avoid huge losses from interrupted productivity.

Again, this is a function of understanding each element of the supply chain operation in minute detail, how the processes interact, how to leverage supplier networks, and how to optimize processes to address the new business landscape. You start dealing with disruption by defining the impact and using your fastest levers for change: processes.

A data-driven solution

So we’ve established that there are two components to supply chain agility and resilience. The first is understanding as early as possible which parts of your supply chain will be affected and how. Once you know what you need to react to, the other aspect is identifying the best action to take. Process Intelligence can help you both understand and respond to supply chain volatility.

Celonis takes a data-driven supply chain approach. Instead of modeling your supply chain and using that as the foundation for planning, simulating, and making decisions, Process Intelligence consolidates real-time business data from every source system to visualize how supply chain processes actually run, perform and are connected. This objective supply chain visibility is the foundation for better decision making.

When it comes to formulating an answer, that’s where automation, orchestration and AI come in. Process Intelligence uses machine learning and advanced analytics to give you an understanding of your supply chain’s optimization potential, recommending improvements which you can evaluate via a process digital twin.

This offers a bigger opportunity than mere visibility. Process Intelligence enables more autonomous decision-making by using the data-driven foundation to enable the kind of AI agents, automations or workflows that Gartner predicts will power 25% of supply chain KPI reporting by 2028. With Process Intelligence extracting and standardizing accurate data from across the business, these AI applications are fueled with the crucial process data and business context they need to make appropriate decisions.

Zooming out to the bigger picture, these capabilities mean Process Intelligence can serve as a command center for the supply chain. With its data-driven approach, cross-system visibility, and process orchestration, Process Intelligence brings insights and action together in one solution. As a single source of truth for measuring, monitoring, and enforcing process conformance, you can use Process Intelligence to optimize macro supply chain performance as well as specific use cases. A consolidated solution for an increasingly complex supply chain landscape.

Creating total transparency

Supply chains can suffer from being organized in silos (teams, functions, locations, companies), creating information asymmetry where supply chain managers and business partners are making decisions based on different, incomplete information. Process Intelligence helps to break through these silos within organizations, but Celonis also offers a solution to help bust them across organizations.

Celonis Networks recognizes that the more information you have, the better your decision-making. By sharing information between organizations, you can reduce that information asymmetry and ensure you’re making better decisions as an end-to-end supply chain, not just within your organization. Instead of visibility ending at the point you procure something from a supplier and await a shipment update, for example, Celonis Networks can extend your awareness to what’s happening on the supplier side in terms of order management, inventories, and the status of procured products.

Supply chains don’t stop at the walls of your company. Issues with your suppliers have an impact on you but also other business partners. Celonis Networks makes supply chain management actionable on a transactional, day-to-day level. You have more certainty of order statuses and fulfillment, while you can communicate that information with customers to improve service levels and their experience.

I began by describing tariffs as another supply chain challenge. With Process Intelligence, however, we can also view it as a chance to set up your organization not just to manage this disruption but whatever disruption will come in the future.