Food & Ingredients · Vitamins and nutritional supplements, food group

From pilot to platform asset: AI product recommendations at scale

Starting point

A vitamin subsidiary inside a food group had a successful pilot for AI-driven product recommendations — scoped to a single application area. Success created pull: other teams wanted the tool for their categories. Without a platform structure, this would have degraded into 13 island solutions, not a group-wide asset.

What we did

We reshaped the pilot into a platform asset — together with the client team. Application areas rolled out in a structured way (beauty, sleep, sports, pregnancy, immune and more), content curated, roles and a maintenance process put in place. Disciplines deployed: AI implementation, content engineering, change and enablement inside the business unit. Two quarters, small mixed team.

Results

application areas rolled out (beauty, sleep, sports, pregnancy, immune and more)

pilot tool restructured into a platform

> 100

curated product recommendations in the new catalogue

2 quarters

from pilot success to platform asset

What we learned

A pilot success is a temptation, not a target. Anyone scaling it without platform work ends up copying the prototype — and multiplying its weaknesses too. The step from pilot to platform asset is a separate build with its own scope. It is not a roll-out.

This is the summary. How we approached it methodologically — which architectural decisions we made, what we discarded and which patterns can be transferred to other contexts — we discuss in a personal conversation.

Not because we want to sell you something. But because this depth is what our clients engage us for — and it does not belong on the open internet.