AFS realized $1M+ in incremental profit in six months with ChukAI

Challenge

A two-point margin mandate, with no clear path to hit it

AFS had a mandate to improve margin by 2 pp in 2026.

AFS leadership recognized an opportunity to improve margin, but required improved visibility and execution infrastructure to identify where margin was being lost and to translate those findings into action across a complex, multi-entity organization.

For example, system pricing guidance was primarily based on broad product-group rules. The guidance often treated products and transactions similarly regardless of supplier, customer profile, order economics, or local market dynamics. This produced prices that did not serve its suppliers, customers or AFS itself appropriately, and also reduced sales-team confidence in the guidance, contributing to frequent manual discounting.

Adding to this, incomplete and inconsistent ERP data required teams to rely on spreadsheet-based workarounds and non-standardized reporting. Leadership could monitor overall margin performance, but had to spend manual effort to isolate the customers, products, transactions, or sales behaviors driving the opportunity.

AFS needed more than improved visibility. They required a centralized, reliable data foundation, intelligent pricing guidance, and ongoing execution support to help leadership and sales teams convert margin opportunities into measurable P&L results.

Solution

An AI-native services model built for industrial distribution

AFS partnered with ChukAI as an AI-native profit-intelligence service, combining advanced transaction-level analysis with hands-on implementation support. Rather than deploying a standalone software tool, ChukAI worked alongside AFS leadership and functional teams to build a solution around the company's data, operating model, and institutional knowledge.

Creating a reliable analytical foundation

ChukAI unified ERP data and manual spreadsheets into a normalized transaction-level layer designed around how AFS actually operates. Working closely with the AFS team, ChukAI incorporated critical tribal knowledge and introduced new classifications that were not available in the source systems, including customer channel, end market, and regional market (MSA). This enabled ChukAI's ML models to evaluate pricing, cost, and margin performance accurately across customers, products, transactions, and geographies.

Adding AI intelligence

ChukAI then combined ML-driven analysis with ongoing input from AFS leadership, finance, sales operations, business intelligence, IT, and procurement. Recommendations were reviewed collaboratively, refined using operating context, and translated into practical system and process changes.

Visibility drives behavior change

Initial efforts focused on strengthening override discipline. ChukAI redesigned guidance to introduce override reason codes, margin floors, manager dashboards, and clearer accountability across the organization.

The result was a continuous improvement process: better data produced more accurate guidance, more accurate guidance increased frontline confidence, and stronger governance helped managers reinforce consistent pricing behavior and discipline across the organization.

Why AFS chose ChukAI

An accountable operating partner, not a software vendor

AFS needed more than a software vendor or a traditional consulting team. Its pricing environment was nuanced, its systems complex, and the required changes operationally sensitive – similar to most advanced businesses. These business realities are not supported by off-the-shelf products or strategy-only engagements.

ChukAI brought a differentiated combination of industrial-distribution expertise, private-equity value-creation experience, and AI-native delivery. The team understood the realities of distributor pricing, complex ERP environments, frontline sales behavior, and the operating discipline required to translate analysis into measurable P&L improvement.

That domain expertise enabled ChukAI to work as an extension of the AFS team. Through weekly working sessions, direct access to leadership, and ongoing reporting to the company's private equity sponsor, ChukAI helped move initiatives from diagnosis through implementation and adoption.

The AFS partnership demonstrates a new model for value creation in industrial distribution: AI-native services that combine bespoke technology, domain expertise, and direct outcome accountability. ChukAI is defining this category by helping complex distributor platforms translate fragmented data and operational nuance into measurable P&L improvement.