top of page

How Qlik + Pingahla Are Transforming Tariff, FX, and Supply Chain Risk Management — Webinar Replay Inside

  • chrisevans75
  • 6 days ago
  • 5 min read

If you weren’t able to join our recent Pingahla + Qlik session on Tariff & Supply Chain Risk Optimization webinar, no worries. You can catch the full recording here.



Here’s a quick walkthrough of what we covered so you can decide if it’s worth sharing with your finance, supply chain, and procurement teams (spoiler: it is).


Why We Built a Tariff & FX Optimization Solution


I kicked things off by framing the problem many manufacturers, CPG brands, and global supply chain organizations are living with every day:


  • Tariffs and FX rates are volatile and politically driven—but your margins and pricing can’t be.

  • Most teams are reactive: they get a static report after the damage is done.

  • Limited visibility across suppliers, countries, lanes, and FX sources makes it hard to answer simple questions like:

    • “What’s our tariff exposure by lane or product family?”

    • “What happens to contribution margin if FX moves 3%?”

    • “Where can we reroute or re-source to protect margins?”

To address that, Pingahla partnered with Qlik to build an end-to-end, production-ready solution that:


  1. Ingests data from ERPs, procurement systems, freight forwarders, trade intelligence platforms, and FX feeds using Qlik Talend Cloud

  2. Cleans and reconciles it using our Pingahla Qlik Talend AI Data Quality Accelerator (PDQA)

  3. Delivers analytics, what-if scenarios, and optimization recommendations with Qlik Cloud Analytics, including AI and predictive modelling


The Architecture in Plain English


Before handing it off to Luis for the live demo, we walked through the high-level architecture:


  • Data Sources

    • ERPs: SAP, Dynamics, Infor, and others

    • Procurement & freight: TMS / freight forwarders, logistics platforms

    • FX & macro: IMF, ECB, and other FX feeds

    • Government HTS / tariff APIs for near-real-time updates

    • Optional third-party trade intelligence (e.g., Import Genius, S&P Global, etc.)

  • Integration & Transformation – Qlik Talend Cloud

    • Extracts data from all these systems (APIs, files, DBs, message queues)

    • Transforms and harmonizes it into a unified model

    • Applies business rules for tariffs, lanes, materials, and suppliers

  • Data Quality – PDQA

    • Detects duplicates, anomalies, and conflicts across multiple sources (e.g., four FX feeds, one outlier)

    • Surfaces trusted “golden records” for key metrics like FX, tariffs, and costs

    • Ensures dashboards and models are built on validated, explainable data

  • Analytics & Optimization – Qlik Cloud

    • Interactive dashboards and visualizations for business users

    • AI-driven insights and predictive scenarios

    • Optimization recommendations for reroutes, alternate suppliers, and lane selection


We designed it to be proactive, not just another reporting layer that tells you what went wrong yesterday.


Live Demo: Inside the Tariff & Supply Chain Risk Dashboard


Our Qlik Solution Architect, Luis Alejandro Bernal, then walked through the actual dashboard we built for a global paint manufacturing company.

He showed four main tabs:


1. Executive Overview & Risk Snapshot

At the top: filters like currency, shipment date, product family, and lane, so leaders can slice exposure instantly.

Key KPIs included:

  • Total tariff cost

  • Tariff as a % of COGS

  • FX impact at risk

  • On-time delivery rate

  • Contribution margin delta vs. baseline

Visuals included:

  • Tariff cost impact on contribution margin over time

  • Top sourcing countries by COGS exposure

  • FX exposure by currency pair

The most actionable piece on this page:

  • Lane Optimization – Recommended Reroutes

    • Shows current lane vs optimized lane

    • Includes rationale (e.g., better cost, lower risk, improved reliability)

    • Can optimize for revenue, cost, time, or a custom business objective

  • Alerts & Exceptions

    • HTS updates

    • Currency alerts

    • Other rules-based notifications that matter to trade, finance, and supply chain teams


2. Raw Material Price & Volatility Analysis

Here Luis showed how the solution helps teams manage raw material price risk:

  • Cost of materials over time

  • Price volatility index

  • Tariff impact and FX-adjusted cost

  • High-risk materials as a % of total

Key visuals:

  • Cost share by country (China, India, US, and others)

  • Raw material price trends & volatility, helping teams choose strategic buy/sell windows


3. FX Monitoring & Exposure

This tab focused on FX risk and how it evolves:

  • Currency FX rate over time

  • Average exchange rate %

  • Volatility index %

  • Rate spread and days in range

By selecting a target currency (e.g., CNY), users can:

  • See historical behavior and volatility

  • Identify peaks and troughs

  • Use that insight when layering tariffs and lane decisions on top


4. Supply Chain Risk & At-Risk Suppliers

The final tab zoomed out to the full supply chain picture:

  • Total trade value

  • Tariff %

  • Tariff-adjusted value

  • Cost uplift

  • Top at-risk suppliers

The standout visualization here was the Sankey diagram:

  • Flows from supplier → origin country → material → destination region → product family

  • Line thickness represents trade value moving through each node

  • Makes it easy to see where risk and value are concentrated in the network

This gives a powerful “single pane of glass” view of how tariffs, FX, and sourcing decisions intersect across the global supply chain.


Audience Q&A Highlights

We wrapped with a robust Q&A. Here are some of the themes that came up:


How often do you update tariffs and FX rates?

The model supports scheduled and automated refreshes:

  • As often as every 5–15 minutes for most sources

  • Real-time is also possible when the source supports streaming, webhooks, or message queues


Can we integrate our own HTS, FX, and trade data sources?

Yes. Using Qlik Talend Cloud, we can ingest from:

  • Government tariff APIs

  • Custom HTS files

  • IMF / ECB FX feeds

  • Trade intelligence platforms (e.g., Import Genius, S&P Global)

  • Any third-party API or export your team uses today

Everything is configurable to your business rules.


Do you support what-if scenarios and hypothetical tariff changes?

Yes. The solution includes a scenario engine where users can adjust:

  • Unit tariff rates

  • FX markups

  • Duty percentages

…and see the impact on COGS and contribution margin, comparing baseline vs. adjusted scenarios before making procurement decisions.


Our ERP is heavily customized. How fast can you onboard us?

Qlik Talend is built for complex, custom ERPs:

  • Supports 2,000+ connectors (APIs, databases, file formats, etc.)

  • Typical ingestion and mapping can be done in days, not months

  • PDQA further accelerates onboarding by automating data quality checks and surfacing trusted fields


Is this self-service for business users, or IT-locked?

The dashboards are designed for business teams:

  • Drill from executive KPIs down to shipment-level detail

  • Interact with associative filters

  • Export data

  • Build new visualizations (depending on permissions)

Finance, procurement, and supply chain users can get answers without waiting on IT.


Is optimization rules-based or machine-learning driven?

It can be either or both:

  • Out-of-the-box: A rules-based framework using historical performance, transportation costs, and lane efficiency

  • Advanced: ML models predicting lane reliability, delays, or optimal routing, leveraging Snowflake, Databricks, or Qlik AutoML


Customers can start simple and evolve toward more advanced ML-driven optimization over time.

 
 
 
bottom of page