Begin with the workflow vocabulary
Inventory reconciliation, Catalog operations, Demand planning each have distinct inputs and review points. A shared vocabulary should explain what the core entities—SKU, Location, Inventory event, Product attribute—mean and how they relate. A model cannot repair conflicting business definitions just by receiving a longer prompt.
Preserve context that changes the answer
Define stable SKU and location keys, distinguish on-hand from available-to-promise stock, and retain event timestamps and units. Record the source authority and the conditions under which information applies. An answer can be fluent and still be wrong because it used the wrong entity relationship, document version, unit, or time period.
Make evidence a product feature
A merchandising team investigates stock discrepancies and inconsistent product information across stores and digital channels. The user experience should expose the evidence behind a proposed output and make uncertainty visible. Provide source links, relevant dates, and a clear distinction between observed records and model-produced interpretation.
Give agents a bounded responsibility
Find stock discrepancies and draft replenishment recommendations. Define this responsibility with explicit completion criteria and a small tool set. Keep retrieval, draft preparation, and record-changing actions separate in the permission model. An agent’s ability to suggest a next step does not imply authority to execute it.
Test the difficult cases first
Include conflicting identifiers, missing evidence, obsolete documents, and restricted records in evaluation. Proposed measures include event freshness, stock reconciliation accuracy, catalog exception precision, and recommendation review effort. Also test whether reviewers can understand and correct an output without reconstructing the whole task themselves.
Keep the ownership model visible
Pricing, purchase orders, inventory adjustments, and published catalog changes require business approval. Data stewards resolve source meaning and quality, platform teams operate access and reliability, and workflow owners accept the business behavior. Treat these responsibilities as part of the architecture rather than a handover note.
Architecture takeaway
Define stable SKU and location keys, distinguish on-hand from available-to-promise stock, and retain event timestamps and units. A useful AI experience preserves this context through ingestion, retrieval, generation, and review.