LONDON & SEATTLE, 11 November 2026: Aforza, Go-To-Market AI for Consumer Goods, and ParallelDots, the retail image recognition company behind ShelfWatch, today expanded their partnership so consumer goods brands can capture and recognise the shelf in every store, including the ones with no signal, and turn those results into Realtime Next Best Action. The companies are launching the expanded partnership on 11.11, one of the biggest promotional days of the retail year, with a new interactive product tour that shows how a brand takes an 11.11 promotion to market and confirms it is executing on shelf.
The 11.11 Day Promotion product tour, lets prospects and customers experience the joint solution hands-on, following a single promotion from launch in Aforza, through shelf capture and recognition with ParallelDots ShelfWatch, to confirm compliance and the next best action for the field and head office.
Peak promotional moments such as 11.11 expose a problem consumer goods companies face every day. Brands commit significant investment to displays, promoted prices and point of sale material, yet many only learn whether a promotion executed after the event has ended. Shelf recognition has traditionally depended on a connection to the cloud, so photos taken in stockrooms, basements and rural outlets often go unanalysed, and the stores furthest from the network are the least visible to head office. By the time a compliance report reaches the key account manager, the window to fix the shelf has closed.
“Brands cannot act on a shelf they cannot see, and too many stores go unseen because the signal drops at the door," said Dominic Dinardo, CEO of Aforza. "11.11 is the perfect stress test. Brands invest heavily in displays and promoted prices for a single day, and they need to know it has landed in every store, not just the ones with good coverage.”
With the expanded partnership, the field rep photographs the shelf, cooler or end cap, online or offline. ShelfWatch guides the rep through overlapping photos of the full display and checks quality as each one is taken, flagging blur, glare, tilt or a poor angle so the rep can retake before leaving the aisle. It corrects tilt and stitches the photos into one image of the display. Its on-device recognition identifies SKUs, price tags and promotional material without a connection, so the rep sees shelf results during the visit wherever the store is. Since ShelfWatch can be trained from a single pack shot per SKU, new products and limited edition promotional packs can be recognised in hours, in time for launch rather than weeks after it. Promotional displays and point of sale material can also be recognised from their artwork, with no training.
“Consumer goods companies are launching more products, more often, and shelf data has struggled to keep up,” said Angam Parashar, Co-founder and CEO of ParallelDots. “ShelfWatch learns a new pack before it reaches the store and reads the shelf on the device, with or without a signal, so the first visit after a launch already counts. That changes how brands spend. They can check every trade dollar against what is actually on the shelf, pay stores and agencies only for verified work, and run one standard across every market instead of a different tool and a different number in each. Through Aforza, those results go straight into the next action for the rep, which is where the savings start.”
Those shelf results then flow into Aforza's Realtime Next Best Action through Ava Audits. Ava, Aforza's Vertical AI, reads the results against the promotion, the account and the store, so a missing SKU becomes a specific finding: a promoted pack absent from the secondary display, or a shelf price that does not match the agreed promoted price. Ava turns that finding into the single most valuable action for the rep, whether that is restocking from the backroom, correcting a price ticket, raising an order or escalating to the store manager. Ava Audits then gives key account managers, trade planners and commercial finance store level proof, verified by ShelfWatch by ParallelDots, of which stores executed the promotion and which need follow up.
“This is what Realtime Next Best Action should look like in the field," added Dinardo. "ParallelDots captures and recognizes the shelf in every store, online or offline, and Ava turns what it sees into the next best action for the rep, the key account manager and the trade planner. On a day like 11.11, that is the difference between a promotion that pays back and one that does not.”
The ParallelDots integration is available through the Aforza Studio Marketplace, so Aforza customers can add offline image recognition to their existing retail execution and trade promotion processes without a separate app for their field teams or a separate integration project.
“Bringing ShelfWatch into Aforza, where Ava turns recognition into the next best action and the audit, means no store is out of reach for our joint customers,” said Parashar.
Aforza and ParallelDots will host a joint webinar on Realtime Next Best Action in the first week of December 2026, with registration details to follow. In the meantime, the 11.11 Day Promotion product tour is live at aforza.com/11-11-day-promotion-product-tour.
About Aforza
Aforza is Go-To-Market AI for Consumer Goods: a unified suite of cloud and mobile apps powered by Ava, their Vertical AI. Ava works alongside commercial teams to make them more productive and more effective, driving Realtime Next Best Action so every planner, key account manager, and field rep knows where to focus and acts on what matters most. Aforza connects trade planning, retail execution, and sales teams across TPMx, CRM, RetX, DMS, B2B commerce, and photo automation, automating decisions and eliminating inefficiencies across the value chain. Built on secure, scalable enterprise platforms from Salesforce and Google Cloud, Aforza is designed for all roles, all markets, all channels, and all routes-to-market. Aforza serves CPG companies around the world, including leading breweries, food & beverage manufacturers, personal care & consumer healthcare companies, and major distributors. Learn more at aforza.com.
About ParallelDots
ParallelDots, Inc. is a venture-funded AI company building computer vision for consumer goods manufacturers and retailers worldwide. Its platform, ShelfWatch, lets commercial teams check every trade dollar against what is on the shelf, pay stores and agencies for verified work, and run one execution standard across every market. Founded in 2017, ParallelDots is live in 55 markets and processes more than 15 million shelf images a month for leading consumer goods companies and retail chains. The company has offices in the US and India and is SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 certified. Learn more at www.paralleldots.com.
Media contacts
Aforza: Andrew Keleher, Chief Marketing Officer, akeleher@aforza.com
ParallelDots: Aman Rayjada, Director of Marketing, aman.rayjada@paralleldots.com
