Case Study
3X ROI: a global FMCG leader runs distributor-to-retail delivery across 10 countries autonomously
A manual, distributor-by-distributor route-to-market operation now runs as one decision layer across Asia, on the world's first agentic TMS.
Segment & Geography
- Industry: FMCG
- Region: Asia. 10 countries.
Objectives
- Replace manual, distributor-by-distributor route planning with autonomous dispatch planning.
- Gain real-time visibility into the order lifecycle and SLA adherence across a fragmented, multi-country distribution network.
- Scale one route-to-market model across countries without adding planning headcount per market.
Locus Solutions Implemented
- Dispatch agent: route planning, batch creation, and re-sequencing across distributor hubs.
- Hub agent: no-touch planning and shipment readiness across hubs.
- Capacity agent: vehicle and roster planning matched to demand across the distributor fleet.
- Customer agent: real-time SLA alerts, order-lifecycle visibility, and delivery notifications.
- Orchestrator agent: coordinates planning, dispatch, and execution across countries and distributors.
- Enterprise integration layer: DMS, order management, freight contracts, and execution tracking, connected into one planning spine.
Impact
return on investment
trips saved every month
in orders optimized and delivered per year
retail outlets reached
Client Overview
A global FMCG leader runs one of Asia's largest route-to-market operations. More than 1,000 distributors supply 1.8M+ retail outlets across ten countries, with 5,000+ riders out on daily delivery. The company was shifting from fixed-route, next-day delivery toward B2B app ordering and dynamic fulfillment.
Manual, distributor-by-distributor route planning could not keep that pace. Planning had become the ceiling on a network adding new markets almost every year. To break that ceiling, the company brought in a cohort of partners: global consultancies and systems integrators. Locus, the world's first agentic TMS, was the only product company among them, and the one chosen to run planning and dispatch autonomously.
Business Challenges
- Manual planning was slow and labor-bound. Planners mirrored sales beats by hand, route by route, across thousands of distributors. Scheduling cycles ran long, picking stalled at the warehouse waiting on plans, and strict delivery SLAs left no slack for last-minute change.
- No real-time view of the order lifecycle. Once an order left the distributor, nothing tracked it against its SLA. Exceptions surfaced late, after a delivery had already slipped, forcing reschedules that eroded retailer trust and buried the team in firefighting.
- Cost-to-serve squeezed distributor profitability. The network could not balance cost, demand, and efficiency across so many routes, so vehicles ran underfilled and distances ran long. Rising fuel and kilometers pushed cost-to-serve up and carbon with it, and thin distributor margins absorbed the difference.
- Every new market meant starting over. Each country and hub came online on its own terms, with limited automation on the retailer side. Growing the operation demanded more planners and more manual change management at every hub, not more throughput.
Solutions Implemented
Locus deployed governed agents as the decisioning layer across the company's route-to-market network, running alongside its existing order management and distribution systems. Locus runs as the system of execution; those stay the systems of record. Every agent decides on live data, operates within the rules the company sets, and gets sharper with every route it runs.
Planning moved from manual mirroring to autonomous, constraint-governed execution. The Dispatch agent runs route planning, batch creation, and re-sequencing across distributor hubs against 250+ live constraints: vehicle types, time windows, delivery SLAs, and load rules. It plans across multiple fulfillment models, cross-dock, multi-day, and single-pickup-multi-drop, while the Hub agent readies shipments with no-touch planning.
One live view of every order, against its SLA. The Customer agent tracks each order's lifecycle in real time, fires SLA alerts before a delivery slips, and pushes status notifications to retailers and riders. Exceptions surface early enough to act on, instead of after the delivery has already failed.
Cost, demand, and efficiency balanced on every route. The Capacity agent matches vehicles and rosters to demand across the distributor fleet, while the Dispatch agent optimizes each route for distance and fill, so cost-to-serve and carbon fall together and distributor margins hold.
One model that scales to every market. The Orchestrator agent coordinates planning, dispatch, and execution across countries and distributors as one decision chain, so a new market onboards onto the same platform instead of starting from scratch. The company's own operational data is the context the agents reason on. Every autonomous decision stays governed by six mechanisms: explainability, traceability, evaluation, autonomy levels, execution sandbox, and human-in-the-loop override.
The Results
People
Teams moved from manual planning to governing an autonomous system.
- Planners now set the rules and clear exceptions, instead of building routes by hand.
- 5,000+ riders execute on the mobile app, with order status visible end-to-end.
- Forward Deployed Engineers embedded in each market, building its specific ground requirements into the solution and training local teams to own it over time.
Resource
Capacity opened up, and one model scaled across markets.
- 12,000+ fewer trips run each month, due to higher fleet utilization.
- No-touch planning across 10 hubs, with picklists generated in under 5 minutes.
- Plan run time cut from 3 hours to 5 minutes.
- 25% improvement in next-day delivery.
- Scaled from a single distributor to 1,000+ across ten countries, all on one platform.
Cost
3X ROI across the engagement.
- $4B+ in annual order value optimized and delivered.
- 15% less distance traveled, cutting fuel cost and emissions.
- 4+ acres' worth of carbon credits saved through emission reduction and sustainable routing.
Impactful Enterprise Stories: 360+ and Expanding
99.5% SLA Adherence for Leading E-Grocery Platform
100% Order-Fulfillment Visibility for Fashion E-com
34% Distance Reduction for PT. Tigaraksa Satria
Frozen Dessert Maker Saves 2-3 Hours Daily on Planning
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