FMCG Playbooks: one workflow, end to end.
How specific FMCG workflows change in an agentic world: the economics beneath the numbers, the decisions that actually move profit, and the agentic workflow that connects evidence, approval, execution, and learning.
- Playbook · Key account management
The agentic key account manager: customer planning, joint business plans, and retailer negotiations
The retailer's opening ask costs €6.09 million. Each function sees only its own fragment, the KAM has six days, and the negotiation proceeds one issue at a time — trading real concessions for a general commitment to growth. Single-issue haggling can only move value from one side to the other. This playbook walks the full methodology: reconciling the account truth, building the P&L that makes concessions visible, finding the joint value pool, negotiating through packages and conditional give-get trades rather than line items, and converting every agreed term into a commitment with an owner, a condition, and evidence.
By Misagh Akhondzad/34 min read - Playbook · Recall and traceability
The recall and traceability agent: from quality signal to targeted product withdrawal
A consumer reports an allergic reaction at 08:17. The wrapper has a lot code, but nobody yet knows whether one pallet, one production hour, or the entire run is affected — or whether more lots are involved. Recall everything and you destroy safe product and confuse consumers; wait for certainty and you expose more people. This playbook walks the full methodology: containing broadly enough to protect consumers, building the genealogy that makes targeted action defensible, versioning scope as evidence moves it in both directions, reconciling every affected unit, proving the recall actually worked, and fixing the cause so it does not recur.
By Misagh Akhondzad/33 min read - Playbook · New product launch
The agentic new product launch manager: coordinating innovation from concept to shelf
Every function reports its status and the launch is declared 82% ready. But the case GTIN means the product cannot be ordered, the shelf-ready packaging blocks the largest retailer, and the media campaign will create demand in stores that do not stock it. A launch is not one milestone — it is a network of synchronized commitments where each dependency has a latest useful intervention date. This playbook walks the full methodology: right-sizing process to risk, separating pipeline fill from real demand, tracking retailer orderability rather than enthusiasm, exposing hard blockers instead of averaging completion, and reading early signals well enough to scale, fix, localize, or stop.
By Misagh Akhondzad/32 min read - Playbook · Trade spend
The trade spend leakage agent: managing accruals, deductions, claims, and retailer settlements
The retailer deducted €250,000 across twelve lines. One references a promotion that does not exist, one duplicates a claim already settled, one has no proof attached, and the quarter closes in five days. The commercial decision was made months ago; the financial consequences arrive now. This playbook walks the full methodology: separating the eight numbers that get conflated, validating claims line by line through ten gates, settling every legitimate obligation accurately while challenging what is unsupported, and removing the root cause so the same deduction stops arriving every quarter.
By Misagh Akhondzad/31 min read - Playbook · Retail execution
The Perfect Store agent: from retail execution photos to corrective action
The app returns 73% compliance. It cannot tell you whether the hero SKU is in the backroom, whether the order failed, which of the five problems deserves the 25 minutes you actually have, or who has authority to fix any of them. Detecting a shelf gap is not resolving it. This playbook walks the full methodology: combining photographs with inventory, POS, orders and deliveries into a real diagnosis, prioritizing by value at risk rather than compliance severity, assigning each action to the owner who can perform it, and proving closure with evidence.
By Misagh Akhondzad/30 min read - Playbook · S&OP
The agentic S&OP decision room: from monthly meetings to continuous decision orchestration
Twenty-two people, 146 slides, and the one decision that mattered gets postponed until the capacity window has closed. A strong process converts uncertainty into decisions; a weak one converts it into slides. This playbook walks the full methodology: organizing planning around decisions rather than meetings, making assumptions and their triggers explicit, building scenarios that are feasible and comparable, routing decisions by deadline rather than by calendar, and turning approvals into verified commitments.
By Misagh Akhondzad/29 min read - Playbook · Demand planning
Beyond forecast accuracy: building an agentic demand-planning exception manager for FMCG
1,942 exceptions on a Monday morning, 127 reviewed by Wednesday, and no way to tell which ones mattered. The planner's scarce resource is not forecast rows — it is attention. This playbook walks the full methodology: separating demand from sales and orders from consumption, diagnosing before overriding, prioritizing by business impact and actionability rather than percentage deviation, measuring whether human judgment actually added value, and designing the governed agentic workflow that connects evidence, approval, execution, and learning.
By Misagh Akhondzad/28 min read - Playbook · Category management
The Agentic Category Manager: assortment, incrementality, and shelf-space decisions in FMCG
The bottom twenty SKUs are only 4% of category sales — and delisting them can still cost you the category. This playbook walks the full methodology: separating velocity from incrementality, estimating where demand actually transfers, protecting the needs and shoppers a ranking cannot see, solving range and shelf space together, and designing the governed agentic workflow that connects evidence, approval, execution, and learning.
By Misagh Akhondzad/27 min read - Playbook · Revenue growth management
The Agentic Revenue Growth Manager: pricing, elasticity, and price-pack architecture in FMCG
A price increase is never only a price increase. This playbook walks the full Revenue Growth Management methodology — where an announced increase leaks away before it reaches contribution, which elasticity actually applies, how pack roles and unit-price ladders decide the outcome, and how to design the governed agentic workflow that connects evidence, economics, approval, execution, and learning.
By Misagh Akhondzad/26 min read - Playbook · Trade promotion
From trade promotion to Promotion-to-Profit: designing an agentic promotion planning workflow in FMCG
Promotions create visible spikes; profitability depends on what lies beneath them. This playbook walks the full Promotion-to-Profit methodology — decomposing uplift into cannibalization, pull-forward, and halo, building the complete P&L, testing feasibility, and designing the governed agentic workflow that connects evidence, economics, approval, execution, and learning.
By Misagh Akhondzad/24 min read