Introduced by Celonis
When tariff charges change in a single day, corporations have 48 hours to mannequin alternate options and act earlier than rivals safe one of the best choices. At Celosphere 2025 in Munich, enterprises demonstrated how they’re turning that chaos into aggressive benefit — with quantifiable outcomes that separate winners from losers.
Vinmar Worldwide: Theglobal plastics and chemical compounds distributor created a real-time digital twin of its $3B provide chain, chopping default expedites by greater than 20% and enhancing supply agility throughout world operations.
Florida Crystals: One among America's largest cane sugar producers, the corporate unlocked hundreds of thousands in working capital and strengthened provide chain resilience by eliminating handbook rework throughout Finance, Procurement, and Inbound Provide. AI pilots now lengthen features into bill processing, predictive upkeep, and order administration.
ASOS: The ecommerce vogue big linked its end-to-end provide chain for full transparency, decreasing course of variation, accelerating speed-to-market, and enhancing buyer expertise at scale.
The frequent thread right here: course of intelligence that bridges the hole conventional ERP methods can’t shut — connecting operational dots throughout ERP, finance, and logistics methods when seconds matter.
“The query isn’t whether or not disruptions will hit,” says Peter Budweiser, Common Supervisor of Provide Chain at Celonis. “It’s whether or not your methods can present you what’s breaking quick sufficient to repair it.”
That visibility hole prices the common firm double-digit hundreds of thousands in working capital and aggressive positioning. As 54% of provide chain leaders face disruptions each day, the strain is shifting to AI brokers that execute actual actions: triggering buy orders, rerouting shipments, adjusting stock. However an autonomous agent appearing on stale or siloed knowledge could make million-dollar errors when tariff buildings shift in a single day.
Tariffs, as previous as commerce itself, have change into the final word stress check for enterprise AI — revealing whether or not corporations really perceive their provide chains and whether or not their AI might be trusted to behave.
Fashionable ERP: Knowledge wealthy, perception poor
Provide chain leaders face a paradox: drowning in knowledge whereas ravenous for perception. Conventional enterprise methods — SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft — seize each transaction meticulously.
SAP logs the acquisition order. Oracle tracks the cargo. The warehouse system information stock motion. Every performs its perform, however when tariffs change and corporations must mannequin different sourcing eventualities throughout all three concurrently, the information sits in silos.
“What’s modified is the velocity at which disruptions cascade,” says Manik Sharma, Head of Provide Chain GTM AI at Celonis. “Conventional ERP methods weren’t constructed for at this time’s volatility.”
Corporations generate 1000’s of stories exhibiting what occurred final quarter. They wrestle to reply what occurs if tariffs enhance 25% tomorrow and wish to modify suppliers inside days.
Tariffs: The 48-hour scramble
World commerce volatility has reworked tariffs from predictable prices into strategic weapons. When new charges drop with unprecedented frequency, enter prices spike throughout suppliers, finance groups scramble to calculate margin impression, and procurement races to establish alternate options buried in disconnected methods the place nobody is aware of if switching suppliers delays shipments or violates contracts.
By hour 48, rivals who already modeled eventualities execute provider switches whereas late movers face capability constraints and premium pricing.
Course of intelligence modifications that dynamic by permitting companies to constantly mannequin “what-if” eventualities, exhibiting leaders how tariff modifications cascade by means of suppliers, contracts, manufacturing traces, warehouses, and clients. When charges hit, corporations can transfer inside hours as an alternative of days.
No AI with out PI: Why course of intelligence is non-negotiable for provide chains
AI and provide chains are mutually dependent: AI wants operational context, and provide chains want AI to maintain tempo with volatility. However right here's the reality — there isn’t a AI with out PI. With out course of intelligence, AI brokers function blindly.
The continued SAP migration wave illustrates why. An estimated 85–90% of SAP clients are nonetheless transferring from ECC to S/4HANA. Transferring to newer databases doesn’t remedy provide chain visibility — it offers sooner entry to the identical fragmented knowledge.
Kerry Brown, a change evangelist at Celonis, sees this throughout industries.
“Organizations are shifting from PeopleSoft to Oracle, or EBS to Fusion. The majority is in SAP,” she explains. “However what they actually need isn’t a brand new ERP. They should perceive how work truly flows throughout methods they have already got.”
That requires end-to-end operational context. Course of intelligence offers this by enabling corporations to extract and join occasion knowledge throughout methods, exhibiting how processes execute in actual time.
This distinction turns into crucial when deploying autonomous brokers. When visibility is fragmented, autonomous brokers can simply make choices that seem rational domestically however create downstream disruption. With real-time context, AI can function with readability and precision, and provide chains can keep forward of tariff-driven disruption.
Digital Twins: Powering real-time response
The businesses highlighted at Celosphere all utilized the identical precept: perceive how processes run throughout methods in actual time. Celonis PI creates a digital twin above current methods, utilizing its Course of Intelligence Graph to hyperlink orders, shipments, invoices, and funds end-to-end. Dependencies that conventional integrations miss change into seen. A delay in SAP immediately reveals its impression throughout Oracle, warehouse scheduling, and buyer supply commitments.
“The platform brings collectively course of knowledge spanning methods and departments, enriched with enterprise context that powers AI brokers to remodel operations successfully,” says Daniel Brown, Chief Product Officer at Celonis.
With this cross-system consciousness, Celonis coordinates actions throughout complicated workflows involving AI brokers, people, and automations — particularly crucial when tariffs pressure fast choices about suppliers, shipments, and clients.
Zero-copy integration allows instantaneous modeling
A key development unveiled at Celosphere — zero-copy integration with Databricks — removes one other barrier. Historically, analyzing provide chain knowledge meant copying from supply methods into central warehouses, creating knowledge latency.
Celonis Knowledge Core now integrates instantly with platforms like Databricks and Microsoft Cloth, querying billions of information in close to actual time with out duplication. When commerce coverage shifts, corporations mannequin alternate options immediately, not after in a single day knowledge refresh cycles.
Enhanced Job Mining extends this by connecting desktop exercise — keystrokes, mouse clicks, display scrolls — to enterprise processes. This exposes handbook work invisible to system logs: spreadsheet gymnastics, e-mail negotiations, telephone calls that hold provide chains transferring throughout pressing modifications.
Aggressive benefit in unstable markets
Most corporations can’t rip out and change methods working crucial operations — nor ought to they. Course of intelligence gives a distinct path: compose workflows from current methods, deploy AI the place it creates worth, and adapt constantly as situations change. This “Free the Course of” motion liberates corporations from inflexible architectures with out forcing wholesale alternative.
As world commerce volatility intensifies, the businesses that mannequin will transfer sooner, make smarter choices, and switch tariff chaos into aggressive benefit — all whereas current ERPs hold working.
When the following wave of tariffs hits — and it’ll — corporations gained’t have days to reply. They’ll have hours. The query isn’t whether or not your ERP captures the information. It’s whether or not your methods join the dots quick sufficient to matter.
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