Only the agile thrive

Businesses have always had to move fast. But rarely have business leaders faced such extreme pressure to respond to so much unpredictability. Facing a steam of rapid changes to global tariffs, businesses are being forced to respond quickly and sometimes drastically. According to a recent Deloitte survey of global CEOs, over 40% are trying to reduce costs while over 70% are evaluating new sources of supply in attempts to avoid significant hits to profitability.  

The simple fact is that when facing change that is so sudden, so unpredictable, and that affects so much of the entire revenue engine of the business, speed and clarity are essential.  

This is why digital go-to-market businesses can respond more quickly and with more confidence that the decisions they take are the right ones. And those agile responses allow them to stay ahead of the full weight of negative impacts that other, slower businesses will face.  

Key elements of modern agility

To move that fast, business leaders must bring together every aspect of their core processes. This requires breaking down traditional silos of operation and eliminating islands of data that have traditionally sat in disconnected databases and cloud services that do not easily integrate.  

Success demands the ability to:  

• Understand the risk and opportunity impact of existing contracts and commitments, both from vendors and to customers and partners  
• Evaluate clearly what products represent the greatest opportunity to drive profitable revenue and which will act as a drag on financial performance  
• Review product and service mixes and pricing structures fast enough to respond to changing tariff-related costs  
• Implement tight controls over discounting and deals to prevent costly commitments to customers that cannot be profitably serviced  
• Establish high-speed go-to-market operations and revenue operations teams, connecting processes and data from procurement to legal to sales to services to invoicing  

The last point is especially important.  The biggest barrier to being agile enough to stay ahead of the worst impacts of tariffs and supply chain disruption is not simply working harder or faster. Instead, it’s the ability to share data across systems.  

Without a single, consistent view of every step in revenue creation and cost management, business leaders cannot be certain of the impact of any changes they make in response to external disruptions.  

Clarity and observability are essential

For most businesses there simply isn’t enough time or bandwidth to evaluate every contract, every commitment, and every customer deal—or to understand the impact of making changes.  

In a large business, there are simply too many vendors, too many selling motions (often across multiple channels such as direct, partner, and ecommerce), and too many product and pricing mixes. This is why automation —and increasingly, AI—are essential to moving quickly enough with the right data to make good decisions.  

According to a 2025 KPMG study, 89% of surveys global CEOs believe that tariffs will negatively impact their business operations, so the need to respond quickly and correctly is only going to grow.  

The real impact of AI

AI-based evaluation and analysis present the opportunity to review and understand thousands of contracts, looking for risks in current commitments and opportunities in the market. Likewise, AI tools can help guide sellers on pricing and accelerate quoting and invoicing to respond more quickly to buyers.  

Again, however, it’s critical that data be consistent and shared across all these systems. Any AI-based analysis requires data —lots of it —to be effective, and that means there must be a single source of truth for a business’ go-to-market operation. This typically resides in a central data lake, or a platform or system designed to integrate the commerce-chain of operational and contractual data.  

Data that is consistent, accessible, and reliable empowers businesses to:

• Move quickly enough to avoid negative impacts from tariffs
• Meet customer demands for rapid response and
• Take action with confidence that the business is moving in the right direction 

That single source of reliable data is often missing—the result of years of disconnected systems that, in less complex times, were adequate to meet the needs of the business. Today, such disconnected data silos and operational barriers are dangerous anchors, slowing down response time and allowing financial risks to go unmanaged.  The good news is that it’s not too late for any business to accelerate into the fast lane of tariff response.  

Your partner in the journey to agility

At Conga, we believe that business success comes from breaking down those silos of data and operation, to become more connected and agile. We see the value of applying analytic and predictive technologies, such as AI, to help businesses become more intelligent in decision making, offering clarity and confidence that leaders understand the real implications of changes—even in the fastest moving organization.  

A single, consistent, and understandable set of data that connects across your business can unlock the ability to review and understand vendor contracts, evaluate the financial risk of changing product mixes, and ensure sales teams are operating with the right pricing and discounting guard rails. With this level of agility, it’s possible to not only survive tariff turmoil, but thrive and grow at the same time.