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Interview
approach to conflict allows them to better navigate these storms when they happen.”
The tariff changes also revealed weaknesses within businesses.“ Manufacturers realized the extent of their interdependence, from the global level all the way down to companies within their supply chains,” explains Fay.“ It exposed the fragility of margins. While manufacturers already knew their margins were tight, this really tested them. A lot of the conflict that has flowed out of the tariff situation has been due to businesses trying to stay profitable in an environment where everything is much more expensive- not even marginally more, but significantly more.”
For businesses that lacked agility, these challenges fed into more conflict.“ Some businesses found they were in conflict within their supply chain, because they were trying to get their suppliers to do more for them, but the suppliers just didn’ t have anything else to give. It’ s not easy to find alternative routes for sourcing overnight or look at how you must reimagine trade compliance. All of that has fed into conflict and really tested manufacturers specifically.”
Fay and the Resolutiion team are available to help manufacturers struggling with these challenges.“ I would divide what we do into three categories,” says Fay.“ One is support with the specific relationship and identifying conflict triggers. If you get these elements right, you minimize your conflict.
“ Then there’ s resolution – if things have gone wrong, we provide tools to support you to resolve issues. Finally, there is continuous improvement, which is very much focused on analytics. This shows what are you learning from your environment and how are you actively improving and that should be a daily live feed of data and activity.”
Supporting all these activities is the Resolutiion‘ Octavia’ platform, which is powered by AI and seamlessly integrates into commercial functions. Being AI-native is critical to its success.“ Our platform is the perfect co-pilot for complexity, and we have tools for various stages. It can help with, for example, complex contracts that include lots of obligations, multiple stakeholders and parties. It manages all of that for you autonomously and we have tools that make sure the contracts continue to
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