The recent Aforza Vertical AI (Ava) briefing event in London Waterloo presented a compelling view on the power of artificial intelligence for the Consumer Goods (CPG) industry. Aforza’s focus on Vertical AI sets it apart by tailoring AI solutions specifically to industry requirements, promising significant productivity gains and revenue growth for CPG companies.
A special thanks to everyone—attendees, partners, and the Aforza team—who made the event such a success. The evening was filled with thought-provoking discussions, live demos, and a sneak peek into Ava, Aforza’s cutting-edge Vertical AI solution.
This blog highlights the key takeaways from the event.
An Introduction to Aforza
Aforza’s mission is to drive profitable growth by providing CPG companies with an end-to-end, connected platform. Trusted by global leaders, Aforza’s platform offers features ranging from route-to-market optimisation to seamless channel integration. By centralising processes and enabling multi-channel strategies, Aforza aims to elevate efficiency and provide a comprehensive foundation for their Vertical AI approach.
The Vertical AI Opportunity
As discussed at the event, the Vertical AI model promises to overcome the limitations of traditional, horizontal AI by focusing on industry-specific use cases. Horizontal AI is broad and general-purpose, designed to be applied across various industries and domains. It focuses on general AI capabilities, such as machine learning platforms or natural language processing tools, which can solve a wide range of problems.
Unlike broad-based AI that may apply across sectors, Vertical AI is built to address CPG needs directly. This model is particularly relevant in a complex, dynamic industry where companies require quick, adaptable insights and automated, actionable intelligence to stay competitive. To provide context, Aforza CEO Dominic Dinardo used the example of how, due to the highly specific nature of the Healthcare industry, you would want to be using a highly specific engine for any AI, built with relevant information, knowledge and regulatory standards.
Aforza has been pioneering Vertical AI since 2019 and we are industry leaders in Applied & Generative AI for Consumer Goods. We have been progressively enhancing our AI capabilities, with innovations in predictive analytics, omni-channel order predictions, and visual intelligence via our Studio platform. Each development has been strategically aimed at enhancing field efficiency and decision-making precision, underscoring Aforza’s commitment to refining AI for practical CPG use cases.
What Does Vertical AI Look Like For Consumer Goods
With an industry-specific task, you want an industry-specific solution. For the Consumer Goods industry, look to Aforza. Unlike broad-based AI that may apply across sectors, Vertical AI is built to address CPG needs directly. This model is particularly relevant in a complex, dynamic industry where companies require quick, adaptable insights and automated, actionable intelligence to stay competitive.
For example, Aforza’s AI can predict customer orders, optimize store visits, and ensure compliance with brand execution standards—tasks that generic AI solutions cannot accomplish at the same precision or relevance level.
CPG companies face challenges that generic AI solutions rarely address, such as understanding in-store dynamics or predicting out-of-stock situations. Aforza’s Vertical AI use cases include “Predict a Customer Order” and “Optimize Account Promotion.” By focusing on Vertical AI, Aforza’s solutions directly address challenges CPG teams face in customer-facing environments, helping them to anticipate needs and deliver tailored, efficient service.
Enhancing Field Team Productivity
Traditional field team applications are often inefficient and outdated. During the presentation, Aforza highlighted the need to reduce manual data entry, minimize clicks to complete tasks, and automate insights. This focus on streamlined user experiences resonates well with CPG executives facing costly productivity drains from legacy applications.
Following this was the discussion around Touchless Operations, a revolutionary feature enabled by Vertical AI. Traditional sales and execution apps often encounter a number of issues, seriously impacting the productivity & effectiveness of field teams, such as:
The system also integrates multi-modal engagement features such as photo and video analysis, geolocation tracking, and even handwriting recognition, all of which can be leveraged to optimize in-store execution and data gathering.
This level of multi-modal functionality provides a seamless data capture and analysis system, enabling team members to capture and process crucial information in any format, directly from the field.
Introducing Ava
The star of the event was Ava, Aforza’s Vertical AI-driven virtual coach and centrepiece of Aforza’s Virtual AI strategy.
Ava brings together Aforza’s Vertical AI agents—specialized for planning, ordering, visiting, and promotions—into an AI assistant that leverages industry knowledge to drive commercial planning and execution. Ava’s 24/7 support provides CPG teams with high-caliber expertise, guiding them through pricing, promotions, and assortment decisions with precision.
Ava enables CPG teams to drive productivity and boost revenue by reducing labor costs and enhancing decision accuracy. For example, Ava can reassign workloads in seconds, enabling managers to adjust team schedules rapidly. Additionally, Ava’s ability to generate profitable order placements or create detailed account plans ensures that teams operate at maximum efficiency.
Ava uses AI insights to suggest optimal actions, helping sales teams with tasks such as promotional planning, upselling, and strategic decision-making. This ensures that teams consistently work toward maximizing revenue opportunities.
With Ava’s assistance, sales teams can optimize product offerings and promotions, leading to increased order margins and more profitable outcomes.
Aforza Delivers The Perfect Foundation for Ava
As emphasised in the presentation, Aforza is all about connectivity. With a powerful omnichannel platform built on top of Salesforce and Google Cloud, a best practice Business Process Library and a Studio Marketplace as the premier ecosystem for CPG technology vendors, Aforza has created the perfect storm for an agent like Ava. Ava provides our customers the ability to navigate through these end to end capabilities seamlessly and elevate productivity.
Use Cases by Persona
As a Vertical AI company, Aforza uniquely understands the industry Use Cases by Persona. Our team has first hand experience in these roles. We know the challenges, how to solve them, and the business drives they impact.
Ava Use Cases: Predict, Coach & Ensure Compliance
Aforza Product Marketing Manager, Callum Fitzpatrick, demonstrated three industry specific, high-impact use cases:
Predict an Entire Customer Order:
Aforza’s AI predicts orders based on in-store data, allowing CPG representatives to capitalize on sales opportunities with precise order recommendations.
Coach the Perfect Store Visit:
Ava’s coaching capabilities provide real-time insights during store visits, enabling CPG teams to execute ideal merchandising strategies that drive shelf impact.
Guarantee Brand Execution Compliance:
This feature ensures that in-store brand representation aligns with corporate standards, facilitating consistent execution across locations.
These use cases illustrate Ava’s ability to translate visual intelliegnce into immediate, impactful actions across the CPG landscape.
Aforza Accelerate: Implementing Vertical AI
To ensure quick adoption, Aforza introduced its Accelerate methodology, a hybrid approach to implementing Vertical AI. With persona-driven use cases and ready-to-deploy features, Aforza aims for rapid integration, reducing time-to-value and optimizing user experience. This approach is particularly relevant for CPG companies looking to streamline AI deployment without extensive customization or development cycles.
Aforza also addressed key considerations like compliance, data privacy, and user adoption—vital issues for CPG leaders implementing AI. Ava’s design emphasizes security and regulatory alignment, ensuring that CPG companies can trust Aforza’s AI within a highly regulated industry.
Aforza’s Vertical AI Briefing Event was a great success, highlighting how solutions like Ava are paving the way for future growth in the consumer goods industry. Through smarter decision-making, enhanced productivity, and connected systems, Aforza continues to lead the way in Vertical AI for commercial excellence. With Ava at the forefront, businesses can expect significant improvements in both efficiency and profitability.
Thanks again to everyone who attended and participated in the event. If you missed this one, there’s still time to get started with Vertical AI to transform your business outcomes.
Recommended Next Steps
If you are interested in understanding more about the potential of Vertical AI and Ava for your business, schedule a personalised demo now with the Aforza team.