How Optiblack is helping an FMCG firm adopt AI for cross-functional AI Transformation

Optiblack led a 3‑day, cross‑functional AI discovery program for ESME Consumer, a mid-to-large FMCG firm building on its new central data lake. Through structured workshops with 7 departments, they surfaced 460+ AI use cases, of which 180+ were prioritised as high-impact, low-complexity “winners” using Optiblack’s C² framework. This created a 1-year AI roadmap and exposed common blockers to guide execution.

Executive Summary

ESME Consumer undertook a structured, cross-functional AI discovery initiative — Project Velocity — facilitated by Optiblack. Over 3 days in April 2026, Velocity Workshops were conducted with 7 departments: Finance, Marketing, Sales, HR, Procurement & Supply Chain, and R&D. The goal was to surface AI use cases rooted in real operational pain points and prioritise them using Optiblack’s proprietary C² (Criticality–Complexity) framework.

Across all 7 sessions, the teams collectively identified over 460+ potential AI use cases, with 150+ qualifying as high-priority ‘Winners’ - initiatives with high business impact and low implementation complexity.

About ESME

ESME Consumer is an FMCG (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods) company in the beauty/personal care or food & beverage space. They sell primarily through retail and general trade (GT) channels rather than direct-to-consumer.

Scale & structure: The company has a reasonably large, multi-functional organisation with dedicated teams across Marketing, Sales Support, HR, Procurement & Supply Chain, and R&D — suggesting a mid-to-large enterprise.

Tech landscape: They run SAP, an SFA (Sales Force Automation) system, a DMS (Distributor Management System), BI tools, and Tableau — a fairly mature but fragmented data stack.

Current initiatives: They are mid-way through Project Unlock (launched January 2026), which is consolidating their data into a central lake, and have now kicked off Project Velocity to drive AI adoption on top of that foundation.

Project Velocity is ESME Consumer’s initiative to accelerate productivity and decision-making by embedding AI into daily workflows. It builds on Project Unlock - launched January 2026 - which consolidates data from SAP, MSS, and other systems into a centralised data lake, establishing the analytics foundation needed for AI applications.

The workshops spanned Marketing, Sales Support, HR, Procurement & Supply Chain, and R&D. Each session was 2–2.5 hours and followed the same structured methodology: an AI primer, industry benchmarks, pain-point discovery, and C² scoring.

Workshop Methodology

Each 2–2.5 hour session followed a consistent five-part structure:

• AI Primer: Understanding the basics of AI
• Industry Benchmarks: Curated FMCG case studies relevant to each department and showing what is possible.
• Use Case Generation: Structured ideation by asking a series of questions that leads to use case ideation.
• Real time Workshop to do the use case scoring
• Prioritisation: Use cases plotted on the C² matrix to identify Winners for immediate action

Workshop was very well organized and very productive

Supriya, Marketing

Impact

We identified 460+ Use Cases across 7 departments. Out of those we had 180+ Use Cases which were found to be winners where they get the guaranteed ROI.

Common blockers were identified across the team and a roadmap is prepared for the next 1 year.