Australia’s retail sector has never generated more data, scan rates, compliance reports, shelf audits, promotional performance and out-of-stock alerts now stream in constantly.
Yet for many FMCG teams, that abundance has become the problem. Commercial managers and field teams are drowning in dashboards, manually building filters, and waiting on reports that arrive too late to change anything on shelf.
Strikeforce, marking its 100th anniversary this year, argues the issue has never been about the data itself, but the time it takes to act on it. By the time a compliance gap surfaces in a weekly report, the sale is already lost. To address that lag, the company has launched StrikeIQ, an AI-powered intelligence platform built specifically for the Australian retail sector.
According to Strikeforce, the average time from data to field action under traditional FMCG reporting sits at around 72 hours. Fixing a compliance gap within 24 hours, rather than 72, is said to triple the revenue impact of that fix, a gap StrikeIQ is designed to close by giving businesses one consistent, trusted source of truth rather than the conflicting spreadsheets and dashboards many teams currently reconcile by hand.
Unlike static dashboards that require a data analyst to interpret, StrikeIQ is built for the people acting on insights day to day: Commercial managers, field teams and sales directors, through two connected tools.
The first, Vantage, is described as a conversational AI analyst. Rather than building filters and pivot tables, users can ask their data direct commercial questions, such as which stores to prioritise for compliance to improve ROI, or where the highest risk of out-of-stocks currently sits, and receive an instant answer, without waiting on an analyst.
The second, Pulse, works as a real-time field trigger. It monitors data streams around the clock, alerting teams the moment a compliance gap or sales anomaly occurs, before it affects the bottom line. Businesses can configure Pulse around what matters most to them and subscribe to updates at their own pace, with the tool translating raw data directly into a directed field task.
Strikeforce positions the two tools to work in tandem: Pulse ensures the right alerts reach the right stakeholders the moment performance shifts, while Vantage allows teams to dig into the “why” behind those shifts. Together, the company says, they create a closed loop from insight to action – delivering better visibility from boardroom to field team, faster follow-up on performance opportunities, a more accessible reporting experience that doesn’t require technical expertise, and one trusted view of the truth in place of competing spreadsheets.
The launch reflects a broader shift the FMCG sector is grappling with: moving from passive reporting to active retail execution, at a time when speed to shelf is increasingly a competitive differentiator in its own right.
- Businesses interested in a StrikeIQ demonstration can contact Strikeforce at ncommins@sfamc.com.au or eFitzgerald@sfamc.com.au.
