The 5 Classes of AI Agents in FMCG: a framework by Asseco Platform for AI that supports sales, retail and HoReCa execution teams. Data unification, recognition, scoring, context and next best action — used across 55,000+ field users in 62 countries.
AI Agents Framework by Asseco Platform: five specialized classes of AI agents — Data Unification Agent, Recognition Agent, Scoring and Prioritization Agent, Context Agent, Next Best Action Agent — working together to support FMCG field sales, retail and HoReCa execution.
The 5 Classes of AI Agents in FMCG: a framework for AI that equips humans.
A framework from Asseco Platform for how AI supports people — not replaces them — across sales, retail and HoReCa execution. Built on the foundation of 55,000+ field users in 62 countries.
Every moment of FMCG execution has an agent behind it.
Every moment in FMCG execution has the same shape: collect data, judge what matters, act. AI Agents in Asseco Platform sit at each of those moments — thirteen specialized agents, ready whenever someone steps in.
When distributor data arrives in five different formats
→ Distributor Data Unification Agent
When a field rep photographs a shelf
→ Shelf Recognition Agent
When a handwritten order arrives from a trade partner
→ Order Recognition Agent
When tomorrow’s routes need planning for the whole team
→ Route Optimization Agent
When a contract with a HoReCa chain comes up for review
→ Contract Compliance Scoring Agent
When a rep approaches the next customer
→ Pre-Visit Briefing Agent
When a sales director enters a negotiation room
→ Pre-Negotiation Briefing Agent
When the next order needs the right quantity, at the right moment
→ Order Recommendation Agent
Whoever stands at that moment — a field rep, a trade marketing manager, a sales director, a CTO, a category manager, a field contractor, a supply chain planner — an agent is there for that moment. Thirteen specialized agents, one chain from raw data to concrete action. The framework meets you where the work happens.
AI at three different levels of autonomy.
Not every AI agent works the same way. Each of the five classes has a different autonomy level — reflecting where AI works best on its own, where it works with you, and where it works only when you ask. Human-in-the-loop, three times over.
In the background
Classes 1 and 2: Data Unification and Recognition. Data is unified, images are recognized, incoming orders converted to structured data — without anyone needing to do anything. An invisible foundation. No user interface, no user input — just reliable, standardized data that everything else relies on.
High autonomy — runs without user initiative
On schedule, for analysis
Class 3: Scoring & Prioritization. Rankings, scores and routes are generated regularly — every night, every morning, every planning cycle. Management reviews them, adjusts them, and uses them for decisions that cover hundreds of stores at once.
High autonomy — runs on schedule or on demand
At the moment, with the human
Classes 4 and 5: Context and Next Best Action. Context before the visit. Recommendation at the shelf. Suggestion during the order. These agents work with the user in real time — and the user decides. AI prepares the ground. The human acts.
Low to medium autonomy — human decides
This isn’t automation for the sake of automation. It’s shifting weight from human to system — where the system performs better: in aggregation and correlation of data whose scale and speed exceed a single person’s perception. The human isn’t replaced. The human is equipped with a tool that knows more, sees further, and suggests faster.
Each class answers one question FMCG teams face every day.
Together, they form a chain from scattered data to concrete action — with thirteen specialized agents across five products.
Works autonomously in the background, with no end-user involvement. Its job is to bring data from multiple sources into one consistent, analysis-ready dataset — mapping records, deduplicating entries, enriching profiles with external attributes. Engages a human only in exceptions that require business judgement. Autonomy: High.
In Asseco Platform:
- Distributor Data Unification Agent — unifies sell-out data from distributors into one data model in Trade Data Hub.
- Customer Profile Enrichment Agent — enriches customer profiles with external data (industry codes, licensing registries, tax records) in Trade Data Hub.
- Menu Data Acquisition Agent — sources public menu data for HoReCa outlet prospecting in Menu Recognition (coming H2 2026).
Processes unstructured inputs — images, text, HTML — and converts them into structured, verifiable KPIs. Does not infer, recommend or judge. Delivers an objective, repeatable picture of reality, independent of subjective human assessment. Works in real time or near real time. Autonomy: High, or Medium when triggered by user action.
In Asseco Platform:
- Shelf Recognition Agent — identifies SKUs, counts facings, detects gaps, reads prices from shelf photos in Retail Image Recognition.
- Menu Recognition Agent — identifies brands, categories, prices and competitors from menu photos in Menu Recognition.
- Order Recognition Agent — reads handwritten or image-based orders from trade partners in Trade Data Hub.
Combines data from multiple sources with business rules or ML models to generate a score, ranking or classification. Answers the “which one” question: which store, which outlet, which contract, which customer. Doesn’t collect data, doesn’t recognize images — it reasons and prioritizes on data already gathered. Autonomy: High.
In Asseco Platform:
- Store Potential Scoring Agent — scores each store’s sales potential in Sales & Retail Execution.
- Route Optimization Agent (DRO) — generates optimal route plans for the entire field team in Sales & Retail Execution. In production, service ratio rises from 58% to 71% — 13 percentage points more time with the customer, same working hours.
- HoReCa Outlet Scoring Agent — scores unvisited HoReCa outlets for prospecting in Menu Recognition (coming H2 2026).
- Contract Compliance Scoring Agent — aggregates contract-execution scores per outlet, region and brand in Menu Recognition.
Runs just before or at the start of a human interaction. Assembles a situational picture from multiple operational systems the team already uses — visit history, active promotions, open tasks, goals, last audit — so the human walks into the moment already informed. The underlying data is already unified by the platform; this class selects and composes the slice that matters right now. Doesn’t tell what to do — prepares the ground for a better human decision. Autonomy: Low — triggered on demand.
In Asseco Platform:
- Pre-Visit Briefing Agent — aggregates purchase history, last audit, active promotions, open tasks and goals before a visit in Sales & Retail Execution.
- Pre-Negotiation Briefing Agent — aggregates field visit data into a contract-execution picture before a negotiation round in Menu Recognition.
Turns the output of other agents — or direct data analysis — into a concrete recommendation: what to do, where, when and why. Delivers the recommendation at the right moment to the right person. Differs from a Context Agent: it doesn’t just inform — it suggests action. Differs from a Scoring Agent: it addresses a specific person with a specific step, not an abstract ranking. Autonomy: Medium — recommends, human decides.
In Asseco Platform:
- In-store Recommendation Agent — generates immediate action recommendations after a shelf photo in Retail Image Recognition.
- Guided Selling Agent — guides the rep through the visit: which products to present, which arguments to use, which actions to take based on store profile and current priorities. Deployed in Sales & Retail Execution (RAO feature). Recognized with the POI Best-in-Class distinction 2025.
- Order Recommendation Agent — recommends optimal order quantities based on purchase history, seasonality and current stock — preventing out-of-stock — in Third Party Field Execution.
AI-driven suggestions, acknowledged by Kraft Heinz.
“We find the Asseco Business Solutions AI-driven suggestions useful in terms of our business processes such as e.g. automating order generation in response to inventory shortages.”
Global beverage leader — name under NDA
At scale — one of the largest AI deployments in FMCG.
A global beverage leader deploys AI agents across its full field organization — for store scoring, pre-visit briefing, shelf recognition, and in-store recommendations. The client plans to make Retail Image Recognition the central tool for settling global sales targets — a signal that AI-based execution measurement is moving from operational tool to management system.
52
countries
Mobile Touch with AI agents active
~3,700
field users
scoring, briefing and recommendation agents daily
9
IR countries
shelf recognition agents toward global target settlement
Each product runs agents from one or more classes.
The richer the AI surface of a product, the more classes it activates. Sales & Retail Execution and Menu Recognition each activate four of the five classes — they are the most AI-dense products in the platform.
| Product | Class 1 Data Unification |
Class 2 Recognition |
Class 3 Scoring |
Class 4 Context |
Class 5 Next Best Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sales & Retail Execution | — | — | Store Potential Scoring, Route Optimization | Pre-Visit Briefing | Guided Selling |
| Trade Data Hub | Distributor Data Unification, Customer Profile Enrichment | Order Recognition | — | — | — |
| Retail Image Recognition | — | Shelf Recognition | — | — | In-store Recommendation |
| Third Party Field Execution | — | — | — | — | Order Recommendation |
| Menu Recognition (page coming soon) | Menu Data Acquisition | Menu Recognition | HoReCa Outlet Scoring, Contract Compliance Scoring | Pre-Negotiation Briefing | — |
Some products (Trade Data Hub, TPFE, Retail Image Recognition) specialize in one part of the chain — contributing where their domain adds the most value. Others (Sales & Retail Execution, Menu Recognition) orchestrate agents across multiple roles end-to-end — from data preparation to recommendation at the shelf.
Recognized by analysts, validated by the industry.
The framework isn’t a concept document. The AI agents behind it are benchmarked by third parties — and certified against international standards that explicitly include AI in scope.
Gartner Representative Vendor
Asseco Platform was named Representative Vendor in the Gartner Market Guide for Retail Execution Management in FMCG (G00768127, April 2025) — confirming world-class capacity for multi-channel, multi-region FMCG deployment.
POI Best-in-Class 2025 — 9 distinctions
Nine Best-in-Class distinctions in the POI Consumer Goods Enterprise Planning & Retail Execution Vendor Panorama Report 2025, including AI/Machine Learning, Advanced Imaging Technology, Retail Activity Optimization, Guided Selling, and Data Management.
ISO/IEC 27001:2022 — AI-based in scope
Asseco Business Solutions is certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022 — the international standard for information security management. AI-based solutions are explicitly included in the certification scope. Valid through February 2029 (Alcumus ISOQAR, 26713-ISMS-001).
Every AI agent runs inside one integrated platform.
Agents don’t exist in isolation. They run inside Asseco Platform products — sharing the same data backbone, the same mobile execution layer, and the same certified security envelope.
Five products. Thirteen specialized AI agents. One integrated suite for FMCG execution.
Common questions about the AI Agents Framework
AI agents are specialized software components that help humans execute sales, retail and HoReCa work — by unifying data, recognizing images, prioritizing decisions, assembling context and recommending actions. Asseco Platform groups them into five classes, each answering one specific question FMCG teams face every day.
No. Each class of AI agent in Asseco Platform has a clearly defined autonomy level — from fully autonomous (background data work) to collaborative (suggestions at the shelf). None of the classes make the final call with the customer. AI prepares the ground; the human decides and acts.
You can start with one. The most common entry points are Class 2 (Recognition Agent — e.g. shelf recognition) and Class 5 (Next Best Action — e.g. guided selling). Each class delivers value on its own. Adopting more classes strengthens the chain from data to action, but isn’t a prerequisite.
The Shelf Recognition Agent operates at over 98% accuracy across production deployments. Accuracy depends on training data, store environment and SKU range — but the production benchmark is well above what manual audits deliver.
Class 1 (Data Unification) needs source data: sell-out from distributors, customer records, product catalogues. For image recognition, a SKU reference library is required. For scoring and context agents, operational data (visits, orders, promotions, goals) is typically already in your SRE or ERP.
It depends on the agent type and the scope. Shelf Recognition deployments typically go live in weeks. Data Unification projects (Trade Data Hub) are phased per partner — first batch in months, rolling expansion afterwards. Route Optimization (DRO) can deploy as a standalone service, independent of the full Asseco Platform.
Asseco Business Solutions is certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022 — the international standard for information security management — with AI-based solutions explicitly included in the certification scope. Data handling, retention and access control are governed by the same policies that cover the rest of the platform.
A single assistant answers whatever you ask. Our framework is the opposite: five specialized agents, each with one clear role, each working on specific data. This design trades generality for reliability. For a sales rep or a director, it matters that the tool always answers the right question — not that it answers any question imperfectly.
Who built this framework.
Marcin Grzegorczyk
Director of Market Development & Sales Enablement — Asseco Business Solutions
Leads marketing, sales enablement and visibility strategy for Asseco Platform — the FMCG execution platform deployed across 62 countries with 55,000+ active users. Active on LinkedIn discussing AI, retail execution and field sales technology in FMCG.
Tomasz Puławski
Product Manager for AI & Analytics — Asseco Business Solutions
Owns the product roadmap for AI and analytical products in Asseco Platform, including Retail Image Recognition, Menu Recognition, and the broader AI agent layer across the platform. Author of the original framework.
Ready to see the framework running on your data?
We’ll walk you through the AI agents operating in your segment — retail, HoReCa or distributor channel — with real examples from comparable deployments. 30 minutes, tailored to your industry, your team size, and your current AI maturity.
55,000+ field users across 62 countries · 9× POI Best-in-Class 2025 · ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certified with AI-based solutions in scope
