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Stocked to Perfection.

Your ERP says 100 in stock. Reality says 65. With AI-powered inventory intelligence, you can spot bottlenecks, shrinkage, and sales patterns early on — ensuring optimal product availability.

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Full Shelves, Happy Customers

Empty shelves cost revenue and create damaged trust. With our Mismatch Risk Score, you can detect inventory discrepancies early, optimize replenishment, and boost customer loyalty through high product availability.

Profilbild von Markus - codecentric AG Dortmund

Markus Lüger

Delivery Manager Retail

In 2024, German retail lost €4.95 billion due to inventory discrepancies. The most powerful lever against this: accurate data. This is exactly where codecentric lays the foundation. We consolidate your inventory data from all systems and unlock its potential using AI — shifting your operations from reactive to proactive, ensuring accurate stock levels and high availability.

Markus Lüger

Delivery Manager Retail

20+

years of retail expertise

150+

retail customers

1000+

retail projects

13

locations in Germany

Logo "Mitglied im EHI Retail Institute"

We are a member of the EHI Retail Institute. This underscores our commitment to companies in the retail, wholesale, and e-commerce sectors.

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This is what we can do for you

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Defeating Empty Shelves with AI

Illustration of a full shelf

If you know what your customers will buy tomorrow, your shelves are already perfectly stocked today. Using artificial intelligence, we analyze the sales patterns of your product assortment and predict demand with pinpoint accuracy: per item, per store, and per channel. This allows you to plan your inventory based on real data rather than rough estimates, preventing out-of-stock situations before they even happen.

The AI continuously learns along the way: it recognizes seasonal fluctuations, regional preferences, and short-term trends — from the summer strawberry peak to sudden weather shifts that change demand overnight. These patterns generate a reliable forecast that tells you exactly where, when, and how much inventory you actually need.

The result: High product availability without costly overstocking, fewer out-of-stock scenarios, and satisfied customers who find exactly what they’re looking for. Together, we transform your historical sales data into a forward-looking planning foundation, ensuring your products are available right when demand peaks.

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Count Less, Know More

Illustration: Hands writing on a piece of paper, depicting an inventory-taking activity

Endless cycle counts tie up valuable staff hours — and ultimately provide only a snapshot that quickly becomes outdated. We use artificial intelligence to flip this approach on its head: instead of counting everything based on a rigid schedule, you count strategically where it actually matters.

Our AI evaluates every item and store based on its risk of inventory discrepancy, taking factors into account such as:

  • Product value and margin
  • Sales frequency
  • Historical inventory discrepancies
  • Anomalies in stock movements

This forms the basis for risk-based cycle counting: high-risk items are checked more frequently, while low-risk items require less attention. This significantly reduces manual counting efforts while boosting the quality of your inventory data.

The added value: Less inventory hassle, lower labor costs, and significantly more accurate stock data. Many companies drastically cut the time spent on spot checks and inventory controls, paving the way for a rapid return on investment.

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Understand and Stop Shrinkage

Illustration: A person flees a store with a full shopping cart

Shrinkage costs German retail around €5 billion every year, with theft alone causing over €4 billion in damages.

Using artificial intelligence, we visualize the patterns behind your inventory discrepancies. It highlights:

  • Which items are most affected
  • Which stores show increased risks
  • Which product categories stand out
  • Which operational processes are the actual root causes

After all, not every discrepancy is a case of theft. A significant portion stems from process errors — incorrect goods receipts, flawed return postings, or poorly configured systems.

The benefit: Instead of blindly spending more money on security technology or staff, you target your efforts exactly where the heaviest losses occur. For large retail enterprises, even a reduction in inventory discrepancies by a few tenths of a percentage point can translate into six- to seven-figure savings.

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Dynamic Pricing, Fewer Markdowns

Illustration: Price tag showing a different price under the first layer

Perishable items, high holding costs, and rigid pricing are a surefire recipe for markdowns. With AI-powered Dynamic Pricing, you steer your sales exactly when it counts. The AI automatically calculates the right price at the right time, based on demand, inventory levels, and expiration dates.

This allows you to capture maximum margins instead of writing off products. Items nearing their expiration date or moving slower than expected are marked down early and by the optimal amount — not across the board, but tailored precisely to the specific item and situation. Meanwhile, fast-moving products stay on the shelf at their optimal price point.

The economic impact: Every item sold instead of written off directly boosts your bottom line. Especially for perishable goods, intelligent pricing systems often pay for themselves within a short period through falling markdown rates and higher sell-through velocity.

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Self-Managing Inventory

Illustration: A robot in a notebook pointing at a shopping icon

Manual reordering is time-consuming and only as good as your last gaze at the system. With AI agents, you hand over operational replenishment to a system that thinks ahead 24/7. It monitors your stock levels in real time, spots emerging bottlenecks, and triggers reorders autonomously before a gap even appears.

You retain full control at all times. The agents always operate within the guardrails and rules you define:

  • Minimum and safety stock levels
  • Supplier preferences
  • Budget limits
  • Ordering cycles
  • Store-specific requirements

Routine decisions run fully automated, allowing you to step in only where it truly becomes strategic.

The advantage: Less operational overhead, fewer ordering errors, and reduced capital tied up in the warehouse. At the same time, product availability goes up — a lever that impacts both revenue and customer satisfaction directly.

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When AI Becomes Your Customer

Illustration of agentic commerce: An arrow clicks on a list on the monitor, and a T-shirt appears in front of it

In the near future, your customers will increasingly stop buying things themselves — they will let someone else do it. AI assistants will research, compare, and decide which product ends up in the shopping cart. This shifts where your sales are decided: no longer just at the physical shelf or in the online shop, but wherever the AI makes the choice for the consumer.

We make sure you're ready for this shift. We ensure your product assortment, pricing, and inventory are highly discoverable and transactional for Agentic Commerce: structured, machine-readable, and ready for real-time integration. This allows AI assistants to reliably find your products, evaluate them correctly, and complete the purchase instantly.

Those who establish the right interfaces early secure their spot in tomorrow's decision-making space. Together, we ensure your products get picked when an AI, rather than a human, makes the final call.

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We talk retail.

Further Retail Services

Melanie Volk

VP Consulting

Speed meets impact: your competitive edge

Whether stationary retail, e-commerce, social commerce or AI-supported stores - we support you from the initial idea through to fast and successful implementation. Our expertise does not end with consulting: We develop solutions that create real added value in a short space of time and deliver measurable results. Because in today's competitive environment, it's not just vision and impact that count, but also the speed with which success is realized.

Melanie Volk

VP Consulting