Awayco Forward Deployed AI Engineers

Your AI team, on the ground.

Awayco engineers embed with your team to take retail AI from idea to production — arriving with a full retail stack already running for other retailers, deployed in your cloud or ours.

The offering

Retail AI that ships, not slideware

Most retail AI projects stall between the pilot and the store floor. Forward deployed engineers close that gap: we work inside your team, with your data, on your highest-value problem — and stay until it's live and measured.

Because we build on the Awayco platform — personalisation, mobile POS, clienteling, inventory — you start from proven retail infrastructure, not a blank page.

What we build

Six problems we've solved before

Every engagement starts with one high-value use case. These are the ones retailers bring us most — and the ones where we already have working code, not a starting point.

01

Demand forecasting and buying

Forecasts your planners actually trust, feeding the buying model they already use. Sales history, seasonal curves, and cover targets — transparent enough to argue with, accurate enough to order against.

Typical outcome: fewer stockouts on core lines, less cash tied up in indent.
02

Allocation and inventory flow

Getting the right stock to the right store. Allocation logic across distribution channels, replenishment rules, and store-level inventory visibility that holds up during peak.

03

Pricing and promotion

Category-level pricing engines and promotional analytics. Where margin is leaking, what a price move will actually do to volume, and which promotions are buying revenue you'd have had anyway.

04

Personalisation and recommendations

Product, cart, and post-purchase recommendations tuned to your catalogue and your customers — not a generic model wearing your brand's colours. Live on the Awayco recommendation engine from week one.

05

Store and mobile systems

Mobile POS, clienteling, appointment booking, and loyalty — the software your staff use on the floor. Payment provider migrations, staged store rollouts, and the change management that goes with them.

06

Custom retail apps

Customer-facing apps where nothing off the shelf fits. Booking, rental, membership, and branded commerce experiences, built on our app studio and shipped to the stores.

How it works

From first workshop to store floor

01

Scope the problem

A working session with your commercial and tech leads to pick one high-value use case — and define what success looks like in numbers.

02

Embed and build

Awayco engineers work inside your team, on your data and systems, building on the Awayco platform rather than from scratch.

03

Deploy to production

Live in your stores and channels — with the integration, security, and change-management work done, not deferred.

04

Measure and scale

We prove impact against the metrics agreed up front, then extend the pattern across categories, stores, and markets.

The stack

You're not paying us to build the plumbing

A forward deployed engineer is only fast if they arrive with something. Ours arrive with a full retail stack — data connectors, trained models, and production-grade applications — already built, already running for other retailers, and ready to be shaped around your business in weeks rather than quarters.

Four layers, one deployment
Connect

Pre-built integrations into the systems retailers actually run: ERP and inventory (NetSuite and equivalents), ecommerce platforms, POS and payment providers, CRM and loyalty. We start from your data where it already lives.

Model

A library of retail models in production today: demand sensing, allocation, pricing, propensity, and recommendation. We tune and retrain against your data rather than starting from a blank notebook.

Build

Application components you can ship: mobile POS, clienteling, appointments, storefront personalisation, and our mobile app studio. Assembled and branded, not written from scratch.

Deploy

On our infrastructure or inside your environment. Your cloud, your security controls, your data residency — or ours, if you'd rather not carry it. Same stack either way, and the code and models are yours at the end of the engagement.

The stack does the heavy lifting. The engineers do the part no platform can: understanding your business well enough to know what to build.

Why Awayco

Engineers who know retail

Retail in our DNA

Our engineers have shipped personalisation, mobile POS, clienteling, and loyalty for enterprise retailers. They speak store operations, not just models.

A proven platform underneath

Every engagement builds on the Awayco Customer AI Platform — the same infrastructure powering recommendations, checkout, and inventory for leading retailers.

Production, not prototypes

We're accountable for systems that run on the store floor and in your channels every day — reliable, secure, and owned by your team when we're done.

Track record

Fifteen years of retail AI in production

Our engineers have shipped forecasting, pricing, and personalisation for some of the largest retailers and brands in the market — and for the independents growing fastest behind them.

[XX]%
improvement in forecast accuracy for a national beverage business
Placeholder — confirm figure
[XX]%
lift in AOV from personalised recommendations
Placeholder — supply real figure
[XXX]
stores live on Awayco mobile POS
Placeholder — supply real figure
Selected work
Coca-Cola Australia
Demand sensing engine delivering a [XX]% improvement in forecast accuracy.
View work ↓

A demand sensing engine built into the planning cycle of a national beverage business. Sales history, seasonal curves, and channel signals feed a forecast the buying team can interrogate line by line — and order against. [Placeholder: add scope, duration, and the agreed accuracy metric.]

Demand forecasting
Models
Planning
JB Hi-Fi
Forecasting algorithms managing stock flow across every store.
View work ↓

Forecasting and replenishment logic covering the full store network, tuned to category-level demand patterns and cover targets. [Placeholder: add store count and the result you want to claim publicly.]

Forecasting
Inventory flow
Best Buy
Demand sensing across all computer hardware categories.
View work ↓

Demand sensing across every computer hardware category, feeding buying and allocation decisions at scale. [Placeholder: add scope and outcome.]

Demand sensing
Allocation
Target
Allocation optimisation across Asia manufacturing and distribution.
View work ↓

Allocation optimisation spanning Asian manufacturing and distribution — matching production and shipment decisions to demand rather than to plan. [Placeholder: add scope and outcome.]

Allocation
Supply chain
Petstock
Mobile POS, ecommerce, appointments, and loyalty in one connected experience.
View work ↓

Australia's leading pet retailer runs mobile checkout, appointment booking, ecommerce, and loyalty as one connected experience — from the app to the store floor, with staged rollout and store training included. [Placeholder: add store count and result.]

Mobile POS
Appointments
Loyalty
Bing Lee
Pricing engine across core categories.
View work ↓

A category-level pricing engine covering core ranges: where margin is leaking, what a price move does to volume, and which promotions are buying revenue the business would have had anyway. [Placeholder: add scope and outcome.]

Pricing
Promotion analytics
Webjet
Ad-spend optimisation and pricing analytics.
View work ↓

Ad-spend optimisation paired with pricing analytics — connecting acquisition cost to margin rather than treating them as separate reports. [Placeholder: add scope and outcome.]

Pricing
Marketing analytics
Patagonia
Rental platform.
View work ↓

A rental platform built on the Awayco app studio and shipped to stores as a branded customer-facing experience. [Placeholder: add markets live and result.]

Custom apps
Rental
Microsoft
Sales and supply chain projects across ANZ.
View work ↓

Sales and supply chain projects delivered across ANZ, spanning forecasting and operational analytics. [Placeholder: add scope and outcome.]

Forecasting
Supply chain
Retailers and brands we've built for

Our Clients

Case studies

Deployed and measured

FAQs

What retailers ask us first

01

How quickly can you start?

Typically two to four weeks from first conversation to engineers on the ground. The scoping workshop usually happens inside the first fortnight.

02

We don't know which use case to start with. Is that a problem?

No — that's the workshop. We look at where your margin, stock, or conversion is leaking, and pick the one with the clearest path to a measurable result. Choosing badly is the most common reason retail AI projects stall, so we'd rather spend a day on it than assume.

03

Do we have to adopt the whole Awayco platform?

No. Most engagements use one or two components. The platform is there to make us fast, not to lock you in — you can run our models against your own applications, or our applications against your own data infrastructure.

04

Where does our data live?

Wherever you need it to. We deploy into your cloud environment under your security controls, or host in ours if you'd prefer not to carry the operational load. Data residency, access controls, and PII handling are agreed before any engineer touches a system.

05

Who owns the code and the models?

You do. Everything built for you during the engagement is yours, documented and handed over. The underlying platform components are licensed, and we'll be explicit about which is which before we start.

06

How does this work alongside our own engineering or data team?

We embed in it. Our engineers sit in your stand-ups, work in your repos, and pair with your people deliberately — the aim is that your team can run and extend what we built after we've gone. Teams that already have data capability but not delivery bandwidth get the most out of this.

07

What size is the team?

Usually one to three engineers, scaled to the use case, with a data scientist and a solution lead available across the engagement. Smaller than a consultancy bench, and considerably more accountable.

08

What happens after go-live?

We measure against the metrics agreed in scoping, then either extend the pattern into the next category or channel, or hand over and step back. Both are normal outcomes.

09

How is this different from hiring a consultancy?

A consultancy sells you a team and a recommendation. We're accountable for a system running in your stores — on a platform we already own and support, with the integration, security, and rollout work included rather than scoped as phase two.

Put an AI engineer on your team

A 30-minute conversation about your highest-value AI use case.

Book a demo →