121 RETAIL & CONSUMER GOODS Technology Record asked Board and Coretek how they are working with Microsoft to develop agentic AI solutions that allow merchandisers to identify emerging trends and respond with greater speed Partner perspectives “Coretek helps retailers harness Microsoft’s agentic AI to identify emerging trends and respond with market-leading speed. Using Microsoft Azure AI Foundry, real-time data pipelines, we developed agents that continuously analyse social signals, purchasing behaviour and inventory dynamics to surface actionable merchandising intelligence. A large speciality retailer in the south-east US deployed an autonomous AI agent that flagged trending product categories and triggered replenishment workflows in real time – reducing time-to-shelf by 40 per cent and improving gross margin by 15 per cent. Merchandisers now lead trend strategy instead of chasing data, creating lasting competitive advantage.” David Marmer Chief Product Officer, Board Brian Barnes Chief Technology Officer, Coretek “Board’s collaboration with Microsoft focuses on embedding agentic AI into merchandising workflows using the Microsoft Agent Framework on Microsoft Foundry. By combining Board’s unified retail planning platform on Azure with Agent Framework, we enable merchandisers to detect emerging demand patterns, simulate scenarios and act in real time within a continuous planning environment. These AI agents go beyond insight by recommending and orchestrating next-best actions across assortment, pricing and allocation, while keeping decisions aligned across merchandising, supply chain and finance. The result is a more intelligent, adaptive approach that helps teams anticipate change, reduce risk and execute with greater speed and confidence.” Photo: Adobe Stock/Monkey Business
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