By Tiran Avdar, Global Director, Industry Advisory, SAP Consumer Product Industry Business Unit
A combination of technologies is pushing the aspirational “perfect store” closer to reality. Agentic AI is part of the story. But at least as important are cloud-based, integrated business suites enabling seamless coordination across multiple functions to ensure the right products are on the right shelves at the right moment at what may be tens of thousands of stores globally.
AI-enabled, integrated suites can help make stores more perfect for consumer packaged goods companies (CPGs) in a few ways. They provide a single source of truth for supply chain, marketing, sales, operations, financial, and other data that all play into enabling a perfect store strategy. That integration puts data from retailers (via the CPG’s sales reps, internet-of-things devices, and point-of-sale feeds) right back in the hands of the CPG, where it can automatically feed into planning systems.
AI comes into play here by not just monitoring execution, but also by learning what works and what doesn’t and advising the appropriate staff on what the data say is the best way forward. Finally, the massive number of outlets CPGs serve means only an integrated, AI-driven platform can enable the consistent tracking of perfect-store approaches.
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Perfect store strategy: Retail execution at the tip of the spear
Retail execution systems are most directly engaged in a CPG’s efforts to shape a retailer’s perfect store. These systems have evolved into intelligent copilots for sales reps, making sure products are highly visible and easily accessible, priced correctly, and supported with the right promotions.
These systems help sales reps well before they walk into a store. Pre-visit planning helps establish priorities and potential based on detailed store-performance metrics and competitive products, plans routes for store visits, and uses machine learning to help sales reps create missing planograms in advance. Complete with images of actual products, these speed up visits, help with strategic shelf placement, and foster brand and shelf compliance.
During a sales rep’s visit, retail execution systems help:
- Optimize product assortment, identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities
- Track progress against KPIs such as SKU and display compliance
- Capture in-store images, compare them with desired merchandising configuration in real time, and adjust based on predefined rules and an AI-generated “realogram” of ideal shelf compliance
- Generate quotes, orders, service requests, and documentation while the sales rep is still onsite, driving sales and closing administrative loops immediately
Building the perfect store takes an integrated business suite
But retail execution is only the start. The pursuit of a perfect store strategy must run deep into a CPG organization.
You need unified planning, retail execution, and last-mile logistics in one intelligent suite that’s increasingly embedded with AI that can help make better decisions related to:
- Which SKUs to carry and ensuring availability and reducing out-of-stocks caused by seasonality, promotions, and local events
- Establishing trade promotions and pricing based on historical promotions and ensuring that promotions are reflected correctly at the shelf
- Assuring merchandising, planogram, and pricing compliance
- Integrating sales, supply chain, and marketing data to optimize trade-spend allocations
- Determining tailored actions for each outlet, such as recommending secondary displays for certain SKUs
- Capturing store and shelf conditions and fixing gaps in the field to improve compliance
The AI factor
Agentic AI already plays a role in providing tailored, actionable guidance – and, increasingly, taking direct action – in the pursuit of the perfect store:
- Planning agents correct forecasts and dynamically reallocate stock.
- Promotion agents divert inventory from low-value regions to higher-impact outlets.
- Logistics agents optimize loads and routes in real time.
- Shelf and compliance agents use image recognition to trigger corrective tasks instantly while reps are still in the store.
- Guided selling agents help reps recommend upsells and cross-sells.
- Manager-assistant agents provide live coaching insights and KPIs
And there’s much more AI innovation to come.
“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence,” the legendary football coach Vince Lombardi once said. Given cloud-based integrated business suites and the rapid advances of agentic AI, excellence should be the starting point of a CPG’s pursuit of the perfect store.
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