AlixPartners Launches AI Profit Engine to Improve Retail Forecasting and Drive Profitable Growth

Arthur Zaczkiewicz
·2 min read

AlixPartners is rolling out a new AI engine designed to power profitability for retailers, the company said, adding that its “AI Profit Engine” integrates data from hundreds of internal and external sources “to accurately forecast customer demand, enabling retailers with machine learning — powered capabilities to optimize pricing and promotion, inventory and assortment, and marketing strategies to achieve profitable sales growth.”

AlixPartners said the impetus behind launching the platform is that traditional retail forecasting “has often failed to accurately predict the two most crucial success factors: the number of customers who will shop at a retailer and how much they will spend.” The company said its AI Profit Engine “takes all the standard demand forecasting data points and combines them with additional information — such as pricing strategies, marketing investments, inventory availability, competitive pricing and macroeconomic conditions — to help retailers accurately predict future customer counts, spend and, ultimately, revenue.”

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John Samuel, partner and managing director at AlixPartners, said retailers have historically relied “on rigid, top-down forecasts that struggle to adapt to shifting customer trends and operational realities — making it difficult to model scenarios or align financial goals with actual demand.”

He added that current AI technologies offer “remarkable power to solve these challenges, and we developed our proprietary AI Profit Engine to incorporate and analyze a vast range of data inputs in a single application, so retailers can accurately and efficiently predict demand and achieve their business strategies.”

“Our AI Profit Engine is a game-changer for our clients that can help them unlock growth, improve margins and compete with confidence in a market facing further uncertainty due to the tariff crisis,” said Sonia Lapinsky, Partner and Managing Director and Leader of Fashion Retail at AlixPartners. “Tariffs will impact the entire business – starting with cost and margin, price to consumers, and pricing strategy. The tool is designed to look across all aspects of the business to help solve these challenges, when scenario planning is needed now more than ever.”

AlixPartners said its AI tool structures “what-if” analyses to help identify “the most important levers decision makers can pull across marketing, assortment, and pricing to ensure every dollar invested delivers maximum business impact.”

The company said retailers can use the engine’s output “to inform annual budgets, validate quarterly guidance, and test promotional strategies before deploying them.” It added that it can be used for pricing and promotions, assortment and inventory planning and management, and marketing and loyalty programs.

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