Sponsored by Celonis
In today’s fast-paced global trade environment, sudden tariff adjustments leave companies with a narrow 48-hour window to evaluate alternatives and act decisively before rivals capitalize on the best opportunities. At a recent event in Munich, industry leaders showcased how they transform such volatility into strategic advantages-delivering measurable outcomes that distinguish market leaders from laggards.
Transforming Supply Chains with Real-Time Digital Twins
Vinmar International, a major distributor in plastics and chemicals with a $3 billion supply chain, implemented a real-time digital twin of its operations. This innovation reduced urgent shipment accelerations by over 20% and enhanced delivery flexibility across its global network.
Florida Crystals, one of the largest cane sugar producers in the U.S., unlocked millions in working capital and bolstered supply chain robustness by automating processes across Finance, Procurement, and Inbound Supply, eliminating manual redundancies. Their AI pilots now extend improvements into invoice automation, predictive maintenance, and order fulfillment.
ASOS, a leading fashion e-commerce platform, integrated its entire supply chain for end-to-end visibility, minimizing process inconsistencies, speeding product launches, and elevating customer satisfaction at scale.
These success stories share a common foundation: advanced process intelligence that bridges the gaps traditional ERP systems leave open-seamlessly linking ERP, finance, and logistics data when every second counts.
Why Visibility Is the New Competitive Edge
“Disruptions are inevitable,” explains Peter Budweiser, General Manager of Supply Chain at Celonis. “The real challenge is whether your systems can detect issues quickly enough to respond effectively.”
Many companies lose tens of millions annually due to insufficient working capital and weakened market positioning caused by delayed insights. As AI-driven automation becomes essential, the risk grows: autonomous systems acting on outdated or fragmented data can trigger costly errors, especially when tariff structures shift abruptly.
Tariffs, a longstanding element of international trade, now serve as a critical litmus test for enterprise AI capabilities-exposing whether organizations truly grasp their supply chain complexities and if their AI can be trusted to make sound decisions.
ERP Systems: Abundant Data, Scarce Insights
Supply chain executives face a paradox: they are inundated with data but starved for actionable intelligence. Legacy enterprise platforms like SAP, Oracle, and PeopleSoft meticulously record transactions-SAP logs purchase orders, Oracle tracks shipments, and warehouse systems monitor inventory movements. However, these datasets remain siloed, hindering holistic scenario planning.
“The velocity of disruptions has accelerated dramatically,” notes Manik Sharma, Head of Supply Chain GTM AI at Celonis. “Traditional ERPs were not designed to handle today’s rapid market fluctuations.”
While companies generate thousands of retrospective reports, they struggle to answer urgent “what-if” questions-such as the impact of a 25% tariff hike and the feasibility of switching suppliers within days.
The 48-Hour Tariff Response Challenge
Global trade volatility has transformed tariffs from predictable expenses into strategic levers. When new tariff rates are announced with increasing frequency, input costs surge, finance teams race to assess margin impacts, and procurement scrambles to identify alternative suppliers-often buried in disconnected systems where the consequences of switching (shipment delays, contract breaches) remain unclear.
Within 48 hours, companies that have proactively modeled scenarios execute supplier changes, gaining a competitive edge. Those who delay face capacity shortages and inflated costs.
Process intelligence revolutionizes this dynamic by enabling continuous “what-if” modeling, revealing how tariff changes ripple through suppliers, contracts, production, warehouses, and customers. This empowers businesses to respond within hours rather than days.
Process Intelligence: The Essential Foundation for Effective AI
AI and supply chains are interdependent: AI requires operational context, and supply chains depend on AI to navigate volatility. However, AI cannot function effectively without process intelligence. Without it, AI agents operate blindly, increasing the risk of costly missteps.
The ongoing migration from SAP ECC to S/4HANA exemplifies this challenge. Although 85-90% of SAP customers are transitioning to newer platforms, these upgrades alone do not resolve visibility issues-they merely provide faster access to fragmented data.
Kerry Brown, a transformation expert, observes, “Organizations are moving from PeopleSoft to Oracle or from EBS to Fusion, but what they truly need is a clear understanding of how work flows across their existing systems.”
Process intelligence delivers this by extracting and linking event data across disparate systems, offering real-time insights into process execution.
This comprehensive visibility is crucial when deploying autonomous AI agents. Fragmented data can lead to decisions that seem logical in isolation but cause downstream disruptions. With real-time operational context, AI can act decisively and accurately, keeping supply chains resilient amid tariff shocks.
Leveraging Digital Twins for Agile Supply Chain Management
At the heart of the showcased companies’ success is a shared principle: real-time understanding of cross-system processes. Celonis Process Intelligence constructs a digital twin overlaying existing systems, connecting orders, shipments, invoices, and payments end-to-end. This reveals dependencies that traditional integrations overlook-for example, a delay logged in SAP immediately signals its impact on Oracle, warehouse scheduling, and customer delivery commitments.
“Our platform consolidates process data across departments and systems, enriched with business context that empowers AI agents to drive operational transformation,” explains Daniel Brown, Chief Product Officer at Celonis.
This holistic awareness enables coordinated actions across complex workflows involving AI, human decision-makers, and automation-especially vital when tariffs demand swift supplier, shipment, and customer adjustments.
Instantaneous Modeling Through Zero-Copy Integration
A breakthrough introduced at the event is Celonis Data Core, which eliminates the traditional need to duplicate data into central warehouses, thereby reducing latency.
By integrating directly with platforms like Databricks and Snowflake, Celonis queries billions of records in near real-time. This capability allows companies to model trade policy changes instantly, bypassing delays caused by overnight data refresh cycles.
Additionally, enhanced Task Mining captures user interactions-keystrokes, mouse clicks, screen scrolls-linking them to business processes. This uncovers manual efforts invisible to system logs, such as spreadsheet manipulations, email negotiations, and phone calls that keep supply chains operational during urgent disruptions.
Gaining the Upper Hand in Unpredictable Markets
Replacing core operational systems is often impractical and unnecessary. Process intelligence offers a smarter alternative: orchestrate workflows using existing systems, deploy AI where it delivers value, and continuously adapt as market conditions evolve. This “Free the Process” approach liberates organizations from rigid IT architectures without requiring wholesale system overhauls.
As global trade volatility intensifies, companies equipped to model scenarios rapidly will outpace competitors, make informed decisions, and convert tariff turbulence into strategic advantage-all while maintaining uninterrupted ERP operations.
When the next tariff wave arrives-and it inevitably will-businesses won’t have days to react. They’ll have mere hours. The critical question is not whether your ERP captures data, but whether your systems can connect the dots swiftly enough to drive meaningful action.
