Navigating Tariff Turbulence:

How Global Enterprises are Prioritizing CPQ to Build Revenue Resiliency

Navigating Tariff Turbulence

With recent developments in tariff legislation, global enterprises face unprecedented challenges from escalating tariffs and trade tensions. New and forthcoming tariff policies are reshaping the competitive landscape for businesses with complex, hard-to-source, and highly customizable product offerings. While quantifying the financial impact of tariffs is challenging, the need to rapidly reconfigure pricing strategies and supply chain relationships is incredibly straightforward. 

In this paper, we make the case that moving to a modern CPQ is the most impactful way forward, serving as the operational foundation for navigating tariff volatility while protecting margins, accelerating sales cycles, and creating sustainable competitive advantages in an increasingly unpredictable global marketplace.

For the latest developments on tariff policies, readers can refer to the U.S. Trade Representative's official tariff announcements, which provide continually updated information on tariff implementations and negotiations.

SECTION 1 Part 1: A New Economic Reality in the 2025 Tariff Landscape

The global manufacturing sector stands at a critical inflection point as the U.S. government will implement sweeping new tariffs that could reach up to 60% on certain Chinese imports. This is paired with targeted increases of 10-25% on various industrial components, raw materials, and finished goods.

For manufacturing enterprises with global supply chains, the implications are profound and multifaceted:

  • Direct cost increases on imported components and materials
  • Supply chain disruptions as vendors adjust to new economic realities
  • Pricing volatility that complicates long-term contracts and forecasting
  • Market access challenges as retaliatory tariffs impact export opportunities
  • Competitive disruption as manufacturers absorb or pass on costs at varying rates

Lessons from Previous Tariff Escalations

While the scale of current tariff actions may be unprecedented in recent history, businesses can draw valuable insights from previous periods of trade tension. The 2018-2020 U.S.-China trade disputes offer particularly relevant lessons for today's manufacturing executives. 

During that period, manufacturers experienced:

  • Average cost increases of 7.6% for affected components and materials
  • Supply chain disruptions affecting 63% of manufacturers with global operations
  • Margin compression averaging 3.2% across industrial manufacturing sectors
  • 47% of manufacturers absorbed some portion of tariff costs rather than passing them entirely to customers
  • 38% accelerated automation investments to reduce reliance on imported components

SECTION 2 Part 2: What Tariffs Mean for Manufacturers

While tariffs affect all manufacturing sectors, their impact varies significantly based on product complexity, supply chain structure, and market positioning.

Industrial Equipment Manufacturing Automotive Manufacturing Medical Device Manufacturing
Average Tariff Exposure: 8.3% of COGS 11.7% of COGS 6.2% of COGS
Primary Impact Area: Steel components, electronic controls, specialized alloys Specialized electronics, lightweight materials, battery components

Precision components, specialized materials, electronic subassemblies

Strategic Responses: Accelerated localization of component sourcing, increased emphasis on service revenue to offset hardware margin compression Redesigning components for multi-region sourcing flexibility, implementing more sophisticated pricing models that account for regional cost variations Emphasizing value-based pricing tied to outcomes rather than costs, developing modular product architectures that allow for regional customization

The Revenue Operations Imperative

Revenue operations—the integrated management of sales, pricing, quoting, contracting, and order fulfillment processes—has emerged as the critical nexus where tariff challenges must be addressed. This explains why 78% of manufacturing CFOs now report being "deeply involved" in revenue operations technology decisions, compared to just 31% in 2020. (Syspro, 2024) This heightened focus has accelerated technology investments aimed at strengthening revenue operations capabilities, making CPQ technology the centerpiece of these strategies.

SECTION 3 Part 3: CPQ as the Silver Bullet for Tariff-Impacted Manufacturers

Logik.ai is the infrastructure for modern buying and selling, built to flex as market conditions change and grow with you as strategies evolve. End-to-end, AI-powered, and omnichannel, Logik systemizes revenue risk management and sustainable growth, giving businesses the agility to thrive in uncertainty and rapid change. Our capability set builds efficiency and innovation into your entire buying and selling cycle. Our forthcoming acquisition by ServiceNow gives our customers access to more expertise, technology, and tools than ever before.

~Flywheel graphic~

Our forthcoming acquisition by ServiceNow gives our customers access to more expertise, technology, and tools than ever before.

Advanced Pricing and Admin Agility

Respond to cost fluctuations with targeted pricing adjustments and reliable data:

  • Dynamic pricing logic with flexibility to manage pricing for configuration-based pricing,  tiered pricing, volume discounts, bundle pricing, and custom discounts.
  • Seamless integrations and bi-directional data flow with any ERP, CRM, or other system that holds customer, order, and cost data.
  • Reliable historical and forecasting data capabilities that inform strategic planning

Built-in Margin Protection

Removes the guesswork and ensure peace of mind for every team that sells to customers:

  • AI-guided selling that recommends optimal product configurations and pricing 
  • Automated margin floors that prevent quotes from falling below profitability thresholds
  • Bundle optimization that encourages high-margin product and service combinations
  • Quote-level discounting and approvals to reduce inaccuracies

Cross-Border and Cross-Channel 

Implement region-specific commercial strategies without creating unsustainable complexity:

  • A multi-channel, multi-currency, multi-language, and multi-region rule engine that supports different configuration options, pricing structures, and discount parameters based on where products will be manufactured and delivered
  • Channel-specific workflows accommodate the different processes required for direct sales, distribution partners, and e-commerce
  • Guided selling processes help sales teams navigate complex decision trees to identify the optimal product configuration and sourcing strategy for each customer situation

AI-Automated Quoting

Eliminate manual quoting processes and the bottlenecks that slow down the sales cycle:

  • Provable speed-to-quote capabilities, e.g. conversational quoting, mobile quoting, expedited versioning 
  • AI-driven automations that eliminate gaps in product knowledge and manual or error-prone work
  • Integration with digital commerce platforms enabling self-service quoting for standard configurations.

Revenue Resiliency

Focus on growth while Logik.ai simplifies and future-proofs your revenue operations:

  • Composability and flexibility to accommodate existing and future use cases 
  • Rapid release of feature enhancements that demonstrate innovation and AI investment
  • A customer-led development approach that ensures customers have input into platform evolution

SECTION 4 Part 4: Migrating to Tariff-Resilient Logik.ai CPQ

Logik.ai is the infrastructure for modern buying and selling, built to flex as market conditions change and grow with you as strategies evolve. End-to-end, AI-powered, and omnichannel, Logik systemizes revenue risk management and sustainable growth, giving businesses the agility to thrive in uncertainty and rapid change. Our capability set builds efficiency and innovation into your entire buying and selling cycle. 

Logik.ai flywheel

Our forthcoming acquisition by ServiceNow gives our customers access to more expertise, technology, and tools than ever before.

Advanced Pricing and Admin Agility

Respond to cost fluctuations with targeted pricing adjustments and reliable data:

  • Dynamic pricing logic with flexibility to manage pricing for configuration-based pricing,  tiered pricing, volume discounts, bundle pricing, and custom discounts.
  • Seamless integrations and bi-directional data flow with any ERP, CRM, or other system that holds customer, order, and cost data.
  • Reliable historical and forecasting data capabilities that inform strategic planning

Built-in Margin Protection

Removes the guesswork and ensure peace of mind for every team that sells to customers:

  • AI-guided selling that recommends optimal product configurations and pricing 
  • Automated margin floors that prevent quotes from falling below profitability thresholds
  • Bundle optimization that encourages high-margin product and service combinations
  • Quote-level discounting and approvals to reduce inaccuracies

Cross-Border and Cross-Channel 

Implement region-specific commercial strategies without creating unsustainable complexity:

  • A multi-channel, multi-currency, multi-language, and multi-region rule engine that supports different configuration options, pricing structures, and discount parameters based on where products will be manufactured and delivered
  • Channel-specific workflows accommodate the different processes required for direct sales, distribution partners, and e-commerce
  • Guided selling processes help sales teams navigate complex decision trees to identify the optimal product configuration and sourcing strategy for each customer situation

AI-Automated Quoting

Eliminate manual quoting processes and the bottlenecks that slow down the sales cycle:

  • Provable speed-to-quote capabilities, e.g. conversational quoting, mobile quoting, expedited versioning 
  • AI-driven automations that eliminate gaps in product knowledge and manual or error-prone work
  • Integration with digital commerce platforms enabling self-service quoting for standard configurations.

Revenue Resiliency

Focus on growth while Logik.ai simplifies and future-proofs your revenue operations:

  • Composability and flexibility to accommodate existing and future use cases 
  • Rapid release of feature enhancements that demonstrate innovation and AI investment
  • A customer-led development approach that ensures customers have input into platform evolution

SECTION 5 Conclusion: CPQ is the Foundation for Tariff Resilience

The financial impact of tariffs—whether through direct cost increases, supply chain disruptions, or competitive repositioning—can only be effectively managed through systematic approaches to pricing, configuration, and quoting. Modern CPQ technology has evolved from a sales productivity tool into the operational foundation for tariff resilience.

Start with CPQ and Start Today

For manufacturing executives navigating multiple digital transformation priorities, the tariff challenge creates a clear imperative for sequencing. While CRM systems, ERP platforms, and e-commerce initiatives all deliver important capabilities, none addresses the immediate financial impact of tariffs as directly as modern CPQ. The timeline for implementing tariff-resilient CPQ capabilities is compressed by the pace of policy change. Manufacturers who delay action face significant financial risks as tariff impacts cascade through their supply chains and customer relationships.

As global trade tensions continue to reshape the manufacturing landscape, one thing is clear: the ability to dynamically configure products, adjust pricing strategies, and generate accurate quotes in response to tariff changes has become a fundamental requirement for competitive success. Manufacturers who develop these capabilities will not only survive the current tariff turbulence but emerge stronger and more resilient in the face of whatever market challenges come next.

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