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Food & Beverage AI agent · Trade promotion

Trade-Promotion & Retail-Execution AI Agent

Build promotional offers from a written plan, test each one against the terms open to competing customers of like grade and quality, and stop what cannot be offered proportionally.

Typical delivery
4–6 weeks
Deployment
Your stack
Trade signs it
Proportional
After launch
Agent Care

What this agent does

Offers from the plan, not from the model

In

  1. 01

    Customer, terms and volume data from the trade, ERP and sales systems, ingested as one set.

  2. 02

    Field labels and customer hierarchies, normalised, each customer kept with the class it trades in.

Reason

  1. 03

    The written promotional plan, read as the source every offer has to be generated from.

  2. 04

    Proportionality on an objective basis — the volume or quantity purchased over a defined period.

  3. 05

    Competing customers of like grade and quality, identified, so an offer can be tested against them.

Decide

  1. 06

    Any offer that cannot be made available on proportionally equal terms, stopped rather than scored.

  2. 07

    Every offer routed to the named trade approver, who decides what is put to a customer.

Out

  1. 08

    The plan basis, the proportionality test, the approver and the offer, retained together.

  2. 09

    Write actions executed only inside the approval boundaries agreed during implementation.

Product statement

The agent generates offers from the plan and tests them; the named approver decides what is offered, and the seller stays responsible even where a distributor administers the programme.

Example workflow

One offer, plan to approved terms

  1. 1Plan and terms receivedThe written promotional plan, customer terms and volumes from the trade systems
  2. 2Context assembledCustomer class, competing customers, purchase volume and the terms already offered
  3. 3Offer generatedOffer, plan basis and proportionality
  4. 4Controls appliedProportionality test against competing customers, notice checks, alternative-terms checks and confidence threshold

No human action required

Stages 1 to 4 run unaided, and nothing is offered at any of them — the offer is held, and the approver's lane opens at the confidence gate.

5DecisionBranches at the confidence threshold
High confidence

Goes to the trade approver to approve.

Low confidence

Adds a compliance read first.

Approver decision

The offer is held with its plan basis, its proportionality test and the confidence.

Approve · Amend · Send to compliance review

Approved — the offer may be made

  1. 6Trade systems updatedOnly where write access and approval policy allow it
  2. 7Outcome evaluatedProportionality outcomes, amendments, notice given and what performance was verified

Amendments

Every approver amendment is counted in the evaluation.

What should not run autonomously

Human approval stays in control

Outside the boundary — human approval required

8 items

  • Building an offer around a single named customer.
    • Deciding that a customer is not a competitor.
    • Paying an allowance without verified performance.
    • Setting a shelf price for an individual shopper.

  • Automation boundary

    Agent acts unaided

    • ✓Generate every offer from the written plan already in force.
    • ✓Test each one against the terms open to competing customers.
    • ✓Base proportionality on volume purchased over a set period.
    • ✓Stop what cannot be made available, and hold it for approval.

    Any write happens inside the boundaries agreed at implementation, never ahead of approval.

    • Rewriting the promotional terms the business set.
    • Ingesting a competitor's non-public price data.
    • Withholding notice of an offer from a customer.
  • Changes to the plan basis, thresholds or approvals.

Example output

One offer, annotated

Everything the agent offers is attached to the plan it was generated from.

Offer output · single customer

Illustrative example
Customer
Independent grocer
What was offered
Display allowance on a promoted chilled line
Basis
Volume purchased
Plan it came from
The written trade plan
Confidence
93%
Proportionality test
Open to competing customers

As received

Taken from the written plan and the customer's own purchase record.

Source terms used

  • Written promotional plan
  • Purchase volume record
  • Competing-customer list

Why this one passes

The same terms are open to competing customers of like grade and quality.

What the score decides

Below the configured threshold the offer picks up a compliance read before.

Action

ApproveAmendSend to compliance review

Value

Where AI adds value

The same four claims, placed at the point in the workflow where each one applies.

Where the value lands

Value 01 – 04

Every offer

From the written plan

03Generating

Generate from the plan

Draw on the written plan, the customer's purchase volume and the terms already open to the customers who compete with them — never on a shopper's personal data, which some markets now restrict in food.

01Approved path

Proportional, or not at all

Routine offers arrive generated, with their plan basis already attached.

02Human review

Send the approver to the exceptions

If an offer was made and a competing customer says it never saw the terms, the file shows the plan, the test that was run and who approved it — which is the defence on either side of the sale.

04

Build an evidence trail

The offer, the terms it was drawn from and the person who approved it stay on the customer file.

Integrations

Typical integrations

Five system groups connect to the same agent. Which of them are in scope is decided in discovery.

  • Trade promotion management

    • SAP TPM
    • Oracle
    • Kantar XTEL
    • Vividly

  • Retail execution

    • Salesforce Consumer Goods
    • Repsly
    • shelf-audit apps

  • ERP and finance

    • SAP
    • Oracle
    • NetSuite
    • Customer terms
    • deductions

Agent

Trade promotion

  • Reads the plan
  • Generates the offer
  • Holds for approval

  • Sales and syndicated data

    • Circana
    • NielsenIQ
    • Distributor and broker files

  • Observability & evaluation

    • OpenTelemetry
    • Langfuse
    • Supported monitoring/evaluation sources

Integration availability depends on the client's existing systems and API access.

Agent controls

Six layers between the model and the offer

Each control wraps the one inside it. What a layer does not catch is named in the map below it.

L6 · Outermost — last line of defence

Inward → L1 · closest to the model

L6Rollback / safe modeDrop the agent to plan reporting when evaluation or production signals degrade.Roll back
L5Version monitoringTrack model, prompt, plan-version and customer-class changes.Track
L4Offer trailRecord the plan basis, the test, the approver and the offer made.Record
L3Approver decisionHold offers for a named approver; approval governs what is offered, not whether the terms are lawful.Gate
L2Proportionality gateTest every offer against the terms open to competing customers of like grade and quality; a failure stops the offer.Restrict
L1Confidence thresholdsRoute low-confidence offers to a compliance read before the approver.Require review
Model coreOffer generated — terms, plan basis, proportionality test and confidence
L1 – L2
Test whether an offer may stand
L3
Puts the approval in a named person's hands
L4 – L5
Keep the offer and the terms behind it
L6
Drops the agent to plan reporting when signals degrade

How Nestack evaluates it

Evaluate the whole offer workflow — not only the promotion's return.

Coverage runs the whole depth of the workflow, and every layer is cut by slice.

Surface — the offer the customer receives

  1. E1Final-output evaluationDid every offer trace to a term in the written plan?
  2. E2Step-level evaluationDid the agent use the right customer class and purchase volume?
  3. E3Tool evaluationDid it read and write the correct customer and the correct offer?
  4. E4Confidence calibrationDo low-confidence offers actually attract more amendments?
  5. E5Slice evaluationHow does performance change across specific customer classes?
  6. E6Business outcomeHow many offers were amended, or withdrawn after they were made?

Floor — the offer the seller answers for

Failure modes

Where each failure originates in the agent

Seven ways an offer goes wrong, placed by stage.

Agent lifecycle

Direction of processing →

  1. 01 · Retrieval

    1 mode

    • BU-03

      Competing customers missed

      A customer who competes with the buyer is not identified.

    Stage gathers

    Plan terms and customer class, with the source of each

  2. 02 · Reasoning

    2 modes

    • BU-04

      Return optimised per customer

      Spend concentrates where it converts, not where the plan allows.

    • BU-06

      Silent targeted offer

      An offer goes to one customer with no notice to the rest.

    Stage proposes

    Offer, plan basis and proportionality

  3. 03 · Tool / write

    2 modes

    • BU-02

      Offered before approval

      An offer reaches a customer before the approver decided.

    • BU-05

      Duplicate allowance

      One allowance is paid twice through two programme routes.

    Stage writes

    Only where write access and approval policy allow it

  4. 04 · Output

    1 mode

    • BU-01

      Terms not proportional

      The offer cannot be matched on proportionally equal terms.

    Stage returns

    The offer the approver puts to a customer

  5. 05 · Change / Version

    1 mode

    • BU-07

      Silent basis drift

      A model or plan change widens what the agent will offer.

    Stage tracks

    Model, prompt, plan versions and customer classes

  • Sev-1 · an offer made before approval
  • Sev-2 · terms not proportionally open
  • Sev-3 · terms degrade, offer routes to review
See the complete Food & Beverage failure-mode catalogue

Affected slices

Overall compliance can hide a cohort

Break the offer book down by customer class before you read it: a rate that looks settled across the book can rest on one class that never saw the terms. Nestack reports the amendment rate by class, not only in total.

Slice performance — reported separately, not only in aggregate

Illustrative example
SliceFailure rateLiftLift vs. thresholdStatus
Independent and small-format5.2%3.6×Review
Distributor-administered offers3.2%2.2×Review
Bespoke display and demo deals2.2%1.5×Watch
Standard plan-based offers0.9%0.6×Normal

Bar: approver-amendment-rate lift vs. plan-based-offer baseline · scale 0–4.0× · tick marks the 2.0× review threshold

2 of 4 slices over threshold

Evidence-linked improvement

A cycle closes on a case, not a fix

A cycle closes when the failure is a regression case the next release has to pass. That suite is what the next offer put to a customer is measured against.

Improvement cycle · five stages

Switchback — the path turns at Improve and returns at Learn

  1. 01

    Detect

    Amendment rate rises in a customer class.

  2. 02

    Diagnose

    If one class is amending more than the rest, the offers, the plan terms behind them and the tests they passed are read together until the cause narrows to one.

  3. 03

    Improve

    The change ships against a version, with the offers that exposed it attached.

  4. 04

    Verify

    Release is blocked until the affected regression cases pass again.

  5. 05

    Learn

    The case joins the permanent suite and the trade playbook.

  6. Learn → Detect

    The return edge. The next offer meets a suite one case longer.

Typical build scope

Twelve workstreams across six weeks

The build scope read against the delivery timeline. Week structure follows the six-week plan — discovery, sources, offer workflow, evaluation, integration, then production validation and handover.

Workstream

Week 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6

  1. 01Trade-promotion workflow discovery and boundary definition.Week 1
  2. 02Trade, ERP and sales-data assessment.Week 1, Week 2
  3. 03Plan basis, customer class and proportionality mapping.Week 1, Week 2
  4. 04Terms and volume ingestion.Week 2
  5. 05Offer logic and plan binding.Week 2, Week 3
  6. 06Confidence scoring and exception routing.Week 3
  7. 07Approver decision workflow.Week 3, Week 4
  8. 08Trade-system integration.Week 5
  9. 09Proportionality regression cases.Week 4, Week 5
  10. 10Guardrails and approval controls.Week 4
  11. 11Offer-trail instrumentation.Week 5, Week 6
  12. 12Deployment, documentation and Agent Care handover.Week 6

12 workstreams · 6 weeks · bar shows the weeks a workstream is active — several run in parallel

Final scope and sequence confirmed in discovery

Engagement tiers

What each tier includes

Rows are the capabilities named in each tier's scope. Higher tiers include everything below them.

Capability✓ in scope · — not at this tierPilotOne brand, one customer classProductionProduction trade systemsAdvancedMultiple brands / channels
Introduced at Pilot
Offers generated from your plan✓✓✓
Approver decision✓✓✓
Proportionality baseline✓✓✓
Introduced at Production
Reporting by customer class—✓✓
Approval workflow in your systems—✓✓
Approved write-back—✓✓
Trade-system integration—✓✓
Introduced at Advanced
Multi-channel trade terms——✓
Multi-stage trade approvals——✓
High customer counts——✓
Multi-channel offer controls——✓
Build priceFrom $5,000From $8,000Custom quote
Final build price
Confirmed after discovery based on integrations, workflow complexity, customer counts, approval controls and deployment requirements.
Separate from build
Build pricing is separate from recurring Agent Care, which covers managed monitoring, evaluations, incidents and verified improvements after launch.

What we need from you

What you bring, and what we build with it

Each input maps to a piece of build scope and a week in the delivery timeline.

  1. 01Your written promotional plan

    Terms and volume ingestion and customer mapping

    Week 1

  2. 02Representative offers you have made

    Offer baseline, plan extraction and proportionality binding

    Week 2

  3. 03Your customer classes and who approves terms

    Plan basis, customer class and proportionality mapping

    Week 1

  4. 04Access to relevant APIs, feeds or exports

    Trade, ERP and sales-data assessment, then integration setup

    Week 2

  5. 05Offers you would not want made

    Proportionality cases and the evaluation suite

    Week 4

  6. 06What no offer may be built customer by customer

    Confidence scoring, exception routing, guardrails and approval controls

    Week 3

  7. 07Named trade approvers to decide offers

    Approver decision workflow, then pilot and production validation

    Weeks 5–6

Nothing else is required

Deployment, documentation and Agent Care handover are ours.

Delivery timeline

Four phases across six weeks

Each phase sits on the weeks it actually occupies, and week 5 carries both evaluation and launch work.

Phase

W1

W2

W3

W4

W5

W6

  1. DiscoveryW1
  2. BuildW2 – W3
  3. EvaluateW4 – W5
  4. Pilot & LaunchW5 – W6

Week focus

W1Trade-promotion discovery, plan basis and the boundary

W2Source integration and the offer baseline

W3Offer workflow, confidence logic and approval controls

W4Evaluation suite, proportionality guardrails and failure-mode testing

W5Trade-system integration, pilot customers and targeted corrections

W6One promotion cycle planned under the trade team, then handover

Reading the band
A bar covers only the weeks its work is named in; the fifth carries two kinds at once.
At the end of W6
Validation closes on live offers, and Agent Care picks up monitoring.
Duration
Six-week plan shown · typical delivery 4–6 weeks depending on scope confirmed in discovery.

Next step · Food & Beverage AI agent

Build a trade agent that tests proportionality first.

Show us your written plan, your customer classes and the offers you make outside them. Who signs an offer a competing customer cannot be given on proportionally equal terms, and can that person produce the plan, the test and the notice afterwards? We build the boundary around that answer.

Typical delivery
4–6 weeks
Deployment
Your trade plan
Trade signs it
Proportional
After launch
Agent Care available

Nestack Agents · Trade promotion

AGT-FB-12 · Agent Care available after launch

Build a trade-promotion agent

Four questions so the call starts from your actual setup — then pick a time that suits you.

About you
Your trade plan

No obligation. We’ll map the workflow, name the automation boundary and tell you if an agent is the wrong answer.