A Top Canadian Retailer Cut Packaging From 16 Weeks to 6

At one of Canada's largest retailers, the packaging function sits at the intersection of Brand, Product Development, and Merchandising: a workflow with enormous cross-functional surface area. Getting a single SKU's packaging from brief to shelf took 16 weeks, and the retailer pushes roughly 4,000 SKUs through that pipeline every year. Every week of cycle time is revenue sitting in a queue instead of on a shelf. The teams had strong appetite for AI-assisted execution but no map of where agents could actually compress the work.

Lazer ran a structured discovery phase on-site, mapping the full packaging process end to end and aligning stakeholders across Brand, Product Development, Merchandising, and the company's Transformation Office. The pivotal moment was a "What-If" co-creation workshop that turned cross-functional stakeholders from observers into co-designers of the target workflow. A documented baseline-and-measurement plan was agreed with the Transformation Office so impact claims would be measured, not asserted.

On the back of discovery, Lazer is building a multi-agent workflow that compresses the packaging cycle from 16 weeks to 6. The readout was developed in the open with the client team rather than delivered as a surprise, which kept strategic alignment intact as the build began. Based on discovery findings, the projected impact across 4,000 annual SKUs is approximately 6,908 hours saved per year and 17.3 net days saved per product launch.

Lazer began on-site, mapping the packaging process end to end across the three functions that own it: Brand, Product Development, and Merchandising. Rather than model the workflow in isolation, the team pulled the company's Transformation Office in early, treating measurement as a design constraint from the start. The pivotal step was a "What-If" co-creation workshop that reframed stakeholders from observers into co-designers of the target workflow, surfacing the handoffs and approval loops where cycle time actually accumulated. From that shared map, Lazer and the Transformation Office agreed a documented baseline-and-measurement plan so later impact claims could be measured rather than asserted. The readout was developed in the open with the client team instead of presented as a finished verdict, which kept strategic alignment intact as the build began. On the strength of that discovery, Lazer is now building a multi-agent workflow that takes on the coordination-heavy drafting, routing, and reconciling between departments, while human teams keep creative and commercial judgment. Model and framework selection is underway in the build phase.

Large retailers and consumer goods companies with high-SKU-count, multi-department creative or packaging pipelines where cycle time directly delays revenue.