BCG: AI can lift general‑trade revenue

Boston Consulting Group says companies selling through general trade can lift revenue by 15% to 20% if they use artificial intelligence across planning, store visits, and back-office work instead of treating sales as a manual route-and-order exercise. (fortuneindia.com) General trade means the old retail network of kirana shops, neighborhood wholesalers, and thousands of small outlets that still run on fragmented orders, uneven stock, and sales reps with limited time in each store. (storyboard18.com) The study says the raw material for this shift is data a company already has, like billing records and loyalty data, plus messy field inputs like store photos, handwritten notes, and sales conversations. (storyboard18.com) That mix matters because billing records tell you what sold last month, while a store image can show an empty shelf today and a rep’s conversation can reveal that a rival brand just offered a discount. (storyboard18.com) Boston Consulting Group frames the opportunity around three jobs: sales planning, frontline execution, and operations support. In plain terms, that means deciding which stores to visit, telling reps what to do when they get there, and clearing the paperwork and follow-up that slows everything down. (ciol.com) One use case is an artificial-intelligence sales companion that can suggest the next best pitch for a specific outlet based on the store’s order history, local demand, and what the rep is seeing on the shelf during the visit. (lokmattimes.com) Another is a 24/7 digital sales agent that can keep taking orders, answering retailer questions, and nudging replenishment even when a human sales rep is off the clock. (lokmattimes.com) Boston Consulting Group’s Parul Bajaj said companies can skip some of the slow “maturity” ladder here, because a business still using manual route plans and one-size-fits-all pitches can move straight toward an artificial-intelligence-enabled model. (fortuneindia.com) That does not mean every company gets 20% automatically. The report’s real pitch is that firms now have a number they can test against: if a pilot changes store coverage, order quality, or stock visibility enough to move revenue by even part of that range, the economics get easier to defend. (bwretailworld.com) The bigger change is that general trade has usually been treated as too messy for software-led precision, and Boston Consulting Group is arguing the mess itself is now usable input if companies can read text, images, and conversations together. (storyboard18.com)