- How is this different from the reporting we already have?
- Most FMCG reporting measures primary sales, because that is what the ERP books. Primary tells you what you dispatched to distributors; it goes up when you push stock into the channel and says nothing about whether it sold. This measures the secondary link — distributor to retailer — which is where the market actually responds.
- What does it need from us to run?
- Secondary billing at invoice-line grain, your distributor and outlet masters, and a product master with pack sizes. Primary sales, field-visit logs and panel data each add a module but none of them are required to start.
- Can distributors see their own numbers?
- Yes, and it is usually where the value lands fastest. Views are role-scoped, so a distributor sees their own performance against the network without seeing anyone else's.
- Is the AI going to make figures up?
- No, because it does not generate figures. The assistant answers a fixed set of questions by reading the same aggregates the dashboards read, under whatever filters are applied, then writes a sentence around them. Free-text questions are not enabled.
- Where does the data sit?
- PostgreSQL, in your environment. The whole platform runs on two modest virtual machines — this is not a product that needs a cluster to answer a question about last month.