Transforming distribution:
Powering profits with analytics and AI

Optimizing pricing for fairness, efficiency, and growth

In the fast-moving world of food distribution, businesses must balance operational efficiency with delivering fair, transparent pricing to customers. With thin margins and complex supply chains, staying competitive requires more than just cost-cutting—it demands smarter, customer-centric strategies. Artificial Intelligence and analytics are transforming the industry, enabling companies to optimize pricing, reduce errors, and create a more reliable, efficient, and customer-focused distribution network.

A leading food distributor confronted the challenge of managing 750,000 pricing variations, where manual errors and inefficiencies impacted both profitability and customer trust. Partnering with Inspire11, they leveraged AI and automation to eliminate errors, optimize pricing, and recover millions in lost margin. More than just a financial win, this transformation created a foundation for ongoing innovation—ensuring fair, transparent pricing for customers while driving sustainable business growth.

From quick wins to transformational AI

Action vs. Analysis–Rapid identification, alignment, and action

The food distributor and Inspire11 agreed on a dynamic approach that emphasized swift action to capitalize on the most critical opportunities. By prioritizing initiatives based on their value, complexity, and external dependencies, the team was able to quickly identify and focus on high-impact areas. This method aimed to reduce the time spent on extensive analysis, favoring a more agile, 80/20 approach to decision-making and execution. 

Create a self-funded roadmap by unlocking real value early

The heart of the project was to iteratively work through a solution that would deliver immediate, tangible value to the food distributor – in this case, finding pricing errors through analytics. Inspire11 worked with the client side by side to validate and correct pricing errors in real-time, enabling the team to update and improve the models quickly. In an early validation session, the teams were able to find and fix a pricing error, which alone generated value surpassing the project’s costs. This early success not only funded the subsequent phases of the analytics and AI initiatives but also cultivated substantial goodwill and support within the client’s management team, setting a solid foundation for more ambitious projects. 

Build on the momentum with bigger AI bets

With the groundwork laid by the initial achievements, Inspire11 and the client collaboratively developed an expansive roadmap for AI and analytics. This roadmap envisioned more complex ventures, such as recommendation engines, promotion optimization, and automated order creation. To support these initiatives, the team established the necessary technical infrastructure and operational frameworks to ensure the food distributor was not only prepared to implement sophisticated AI solutions but also positioned to realize the full potential of these technologies in driving business growth and innovation. The partnership then led to the creation of multiple AI/ML-driven solutions that addressed multiple areas of the business from sales to operations.