The Future of AI in CPG Starts with Unified Data

AI needs unified data

AI models have improved by orders of magnitude in the past few years. But in CPG, most of that power goes unused, because the data needed to do anything with it is scattered. Your demand plan is in one system, your supply plan is in another, and your promotions are managed in an Excel spreadsheet.

That scatter is the source of so many of the problems the brands we work with are trying to solve. Scaling operations means scaling overhead, because validating deductions and building reports takes hours of manual work. Trade funding decisions run on gut instinct, because pulling the data together costs more time than the decision is worth. Nothing connects the deduction to the promotion behind it, so overspend surfaces at month-end close, when it's too late to fix. This results in CPG teams reacting to problems instead of getting ahead of them. Legacy TPM systems promise to fix this, but then take eight to twelve months to implement and still leave the connections undrawn.

That's why we believe AI in CPG only works on top of a unified data layer. Models are strong enough; what they've been missing is a system where the sales plan, trade spend, deductions, and supply plan already live together. On that foundation, the value runs deeper than answering questions faster; true value lies in the ability to ask anything, anytime, and act on the answer everywhere at once.

Less clicking, more thinking

A natural starting point for AI is removing cumbersome, repetitive work, and for us that was deductions. All of your information lives in Confido, so trade activity sits right next to the charges coming in. That lets Confido match deductions against promotions by product, dates, and rates, and surface the invalid ones automatically. It's how Feastables recouped $500,000 in duplicate charges and short ships. Auto-disputes takes it further by filing and tracking those disputes on your behalf.

Our AI agent Fido is the next step. In our TPM module, customers now hand Fido entire jobs in plain language. Tell it to copy your trade calendar into next year and it works through each retailer while you approve. Describe the promotion you want and Fido builds it, with the financial impact in front of you before anything commits.

But the bigger shift comes from the questions that go unresolved today. When your whole operation runs in one system, questions that used to take days of analyst time get answered in seconds: Did that promotion drive incremental shipments, or just pull them forward? Which retailers deduct beyond what we agreed to fund? If we move a promotion, how does it change the forecast and supply plan?

Trade calendars, forecasts, and deduction histories contain more detail than any one person can track. AI that reads all of it connects dots humans miss and simulates the paths you didn't take. "If I'd used a different model for my Q3 demand plan, what would my results have looked like?" With Fido, you'll be able to hypothesize, backtest against actuals, and decide on evidence instead of gut feel. The answer arrives while the decision is still open, and because everything lives in one system, the decision you make flows into every plan it touches.

Fido's job is to shrink everything that stands between you and a well-informed decision. What's left is the work that actually grows the brand, like where trade dollars go next year or which promotions earn a second run.

What's next

We just launched Fido for TPM users. In the coming months, we plan to extend its abilities across the Confido platform. As Fido reaches more of the stack, the connections it can make multiply. Your TPM has an impact on your demand plan, which has an impact on your supply plan. These downstream impacts are invisible when the data lives in three different systems. When it lives in one, an agent can trace them end to end.

Less time clicking, more time making big-picture decisions that drive your brand. If you're curious what your own data looks like when it's all connected, we'd love to show you.

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