While duties imposed earlier this year remain technically in force, recent court rulings have put these tariffs in limbo. A federal court declared many of the tariffs unlawful under emergency powers, though enforcement is paused pending appeals, leaving businesses to navigate a gray area between higher costs and the potential for large refunds. For supply chain professionals, the political implications of this move are somewhat immaterial — you need solutions to maintain smooth supply operations without incurring avoidable costs.
Excessive duties on some necessary imports may be unavoidable. However, that doesn’t mean supply chain professionals should remain complacent when it comes to the rest of supply chain operations.
For example: End-to-end visibility is one of the most important characteristics of a healthy supply chain that helps you meet the needs of your customers, and it is instrumental in reducing the havoc that major disruptions can cause. No matter the industry, certainty helps reduce risks associated with overreliance on specific suppliers, regions, or transportation modes, ensuring that businesses are not overly exposed to single points of failure.
How to build greater visibility into your supply chains? The deployment of advanced software and analytic solutions can help, but it’s more than just simply throwing a software product at a problem —it takes strategic implementation with the right partners and the right technologies. Here are some things to think about.
Identifying Blind Spots
As supply chains have experienced more frequent disruptions, demand for end-to-end visibility — from warehouse to customer — has become a growing priority. And because today’s customers have come to expect their suppliers to pinpoint where their assets are at each moment throughout the shipping process, using the proper data and software to provide customers with real-time information about their shipment increases customer satisfaction.
Whether it’s enhanced radio frequency identification (RFID), ultra-wideband or Bluetooth technologies, or artificial intelligence (AI) software solutions, their integration into companies’ Internet of Things (IoT) platforms are no longer optional. In addition to providing vital information to customers, these tools also allow professionals to identify potential bottlenecks before they occur and make adjustments before they affect the customer. In the coming years, it’s likely that visibility will become the rule rather than the exception.
Indeed, the companies that are most successful at mitigating supply chain challenges are embracing the digital transformation of their supply chains. Today, AI solutions can provide real-time analytics, encourage predictive modeling, and automate mundane tasks like inventory management and product tracking. Tomorrow, they will be able to do even more, and may have the power to completely transform supply chain management.
The Importance of Clean Data for Real Visibility
Leveraging AI comes with a catch — it’s only as effective as the data from which it can glean insights. Indeed, maintaining clean, accurate databases is increasingly challenging given the increasing influx of data generated by interconnected systems and devices. And the data isn’t reliable, even the most sophisticated AI tools can generate inaccurate insights instead of actionable improvements.
Here, it’s important for supply chain professionals to examine data accuracy when evaluating potential software solutions. For example, transitioning to software with a 99.9% data accuracy rate will provide companies with a demonstrable competitive advantage. They won’t be spending precious time fixing mistakes that AI pulled through because the data was wrong. Additionally, they’ll be ahead of the curve thanks to accurate data that will speed up the work and enhance their employees’ ability to work quickly and efficiently.
Combining quality data with a robust AI component to filter noise and highlight actionable trends will reduce costs, enhance efficiency, and improve customer satisfaction.
Advanced Scenario Modeling in Times of Turmoil
When it comes to influencing factors like tariffs, it can be helpful to model potential impacts in order to best prepare for them. It’s here that agentic AI can make a real difference.
Where generative and other traditional AI systems require human input to train the program and create new content, agentic AI has a higher degree of autonomy and can generate actions and decisions without human intervention. Using machine learning and natural language processing, agentic AI is always building on its previous experiences and incorporating new data with historical information.
Specifically, agentic AI's ability to learn from previous tasks is what separates it from traditional AI tools. A forecast might identify a potential stockout in the future. Agentic AI, having learned from experience, can tell whether that demand indicates a trend that may necessitate a shift in production — or if it’s just an outlier that does not require significant action. This sort of information can be gleaned from market trends, competitor information, historical statistics, and more, enabling AI to notice things like rising costs and proactively develop a solution. From this information, it can deliver actionable insights that can improve supply chain functionality and eliminate friction.
In conjunction with other leading-edge technologies, agentic AI can help deliver even deeper insights. IoT can provide information on data points like machine health status, asset tracking, and production rates. Agentic AI can harness that information and provide actionable insight your teams can use. Elsewhere, secure blockchain databases allow for encrypted data exchange, and can help grant secure, real-time access to all transactions in a vendor database. Here, it can help eliminate the need to manually update and reconcile individual accounting systems.
Preparing Yourself Before the Next Major Challenge
Certain visibility into the entire supply chain will only become more important in the coming years. And while you may find that your current supply chain tools are serving you adequately, few things in this industry are more constant than change and unforeseen complications.
In an era of increasingly powerful AI, professionals can dig deeper into larger mines of historical data to reveal new insights and empower more accurate predictive analyses. Better forecasting means less risk of excess inventory and wasted production resources. You'll also discover a better understanding of your customers, putting you in a position to amplify the strengths of your unique value proposition, provide more precise services, and identify new business opportunities. Your team will be better informed to make important decisions and explore newly discovered possibilities.
The bottom line is that supply chain managers must become more data-driven than ever before, and ready to deploy software and hardware solutions that support that goal. Those who adapt quickly and effectively will better meet today’s demands while setting themselves up for greater success tomorrow.
Thomas Strain is Vice President of Technology at Surgere.He leads the company’s technology organization as well as its hardware integration to bring data-driven supply chain software solutions and business intelligence platforms to the market. He has significant previous experience leading strategic development of business intelligence, retail e-commerce, and enterprise software solutions in the automotive market. Tom holds an M.S. in Information Technology from the Florida Institute of Technology and a B.S. in Computer Information Systems from Saint Leo University.
This article originally appeared in our 2025 Cross-Border/Global issue.
