Eric Clark, President and Chief Executive Officer, joins the 10th anniversary edition of Commerce Trends to talk about trends, tariffs, tech and the enduring Manhattan customer promise.

Supply chains were thrust into the spotlight during the pandemic and have remained part of common business vernacular since. What are Manhattan’s customers telling you right now about the demands and types of challenges they are facing in 2025?

Whether it’s the pace of technological change, macroeconomic volatility, regional conflicts, or the increased peril of cyber threats, the daily risk to today’s supply chains is significant. This year in particular, trade tensions and the uncertainty caused by frequent tariff changes are absolutely shaping our customers’ decisions. The way I see it, the role of our technology and teams is to help customers stay agile enough to mitigate these challenges (where possible), providing them with the visibility, flexibility, and innovation needed to change direction. That’s something we excel at.

As supply chains have become more complex and distributed, companies have had to rewrite their playbooks. What used to be linear is now abstract, and what customers used to accept as ‘just in time’ is now demanded in ‘real-time.’ Our solutions empower customers across B2B and consumer markets to navigate this new paradigm more effectively, through technology that quickly delivers smarter forecasting and instant access to cross functional data. Resilience is the watchword for supply chains in 2025. We’re helping our customers de-risk their operations, giving them the confidence to stay ahead of competitors, react to global events and turn shifting trends into opportunities.

No discussion is complete without touching on the topic of AI. What’s Manhattan’s point of view on the new technology Wild West?

While ongoing global uncertainty remains challenging, the fundamentals of our business remain incredibly strong. As technology and innovation cycles continue to accelerate - especially due to advances in Agentic AI - our unified cloud platform solidifies our advantage over competitors, expands our addressable market, and accelerates ROI for our customers. At a time when it’s not just about delivery, but the speed of that delivery, we are in a unique position of strength.

Every company says they’re using AI, but what makes Manhattan different is that we’re not chasing news headlines. We’re embedding it where it creates real operational lift, and we’re taking it to a whole new level with Agentic AI. Earlier in the year, we unveiled a suite of intelligent, autonomous digital agents inside our Manhattan Active ® platform.

These use natural language, real-time data, and AI reasoning to dynamically resolve disruptions, drive optimisation, and simplify decision-making across the whole supply chain. Moreover, Manhattan Agent Foundry gives customers the power to build what they need, when they need it, all within the guardrails of built-in, enterprise-grade security and interoperability. We believe AI should empower people, and that’s exactly how we’re building it into our platform. This isn’t innovation for the sake of it: it’s a seismic shift from static workflows to intelligent orchestration. It’s an exciting time to be in the technology space, and our roadmap is strong!

“As technology reshapes the world of business, we guarantee that innovation will remain at the core of everything we do.”

Eric Clark, President and CEO at Manhattan

This is your first year at Manhattan, Eric. What are your takeaways from these last months and your priorities looking ahead to 2026?

From the first day I walked through the doors in Atlanta, I found a company with an incredible, international customer portfolio, best-in-class products, a dedicated team, and untapped growth potential. Over the last 35 years, Manhattan has established a reputation for innovation.

As technology (and AI in particular) reshapes the world of business, we guarantee that innovation will remain at the core of everything we do. We will continue to deliver technology unification, simplicity and speed to market faster than any of our competitors. We want our customers to know that when they decide to partner with Manhattan, they will not only be getting the industry’s leading technology but also access to the very best people and teams in the business.

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