Case
Commercial AI Program at Dustin: Accelerating growth with the help of data, AI and automation
Dustin is one of the largest IT partners in the Nordics and Benelux, with roughly 23 billion SEK in annual sales and around 2 million orders a year. They had been working with analytical AI and machine learning for years. What changed was the ambition and the structure around it. In 2025, Dustin launched the Commercial AI Program (CAP), a three-year initiative to build a genuinely AI-driven commercial operation, and deliver on the growth plan for the company. Avaus is the strategic and operational partner building it with them.
Challenge
The program has three strategic objectives derived directly from Dustin’s commercial strategy: winning market share through customer acquisition, winning customer loyalty through share of wallet and retention, and winning in commercial excellence through sales and marketing effectiveness.
- Existing AI initiatives lacked a systematic prioritization framework and a clear path from each use case to measurable business impact
- Scaling use cases across six markets, multiple offering categories, and both online and relational sales channels required a shared operating model, not just shared technology
- Without the right program structure and governance, results would plateau after the first wave of implementation rather than compound over time
Solution
Avaus joined Dustin as an embedded strategic and operational partner. The work runs on two tracks in parallel: 1) a growing portfolio of data-driven use cases, and 2) building the operating model needed to govern, scale, and sustain them.
- The program is built around four interconnected backlogs: use cases, capabilities, operating model, and change management, so that delivery and organizational readiness develop together, not sequentially
- Avaus’ experts work as an integrated team alongside Dustin’s commercial leadership, program manager, product and channel specialists, data scientists and data engineers. Avaus’ role is to bring best practices for program structure, prioritization, and acceleration, with both strategic and hands-on operational support. The core team runs at the tempo of daily collaboration, with bi-weekly operational and monthly strategic steering
- The program has a three-phased roadmap: Strong Foundation (Y1) to prove commercial impact; Scale with Agents (Y2) to reach 200–300 automations; Autonomous Operations (Y3) targeting 500–1,000 automations that are partly or fully autonomous.
The program runs a use case long list of approximately 100-150 prioritized initiatives, developed through a three month planning phase at launch and now managed through two half-year planning cycles with quarterly calibration. Development runs at roughly five core use cases per quarter, together generating 20 to 30 automations per quarter in total across all of them, with the pace to accelerate tenfold as data and technology capabilities mature and as AI is applied more broadly within the operating model itself.
Three use case examples illustrate how the data, AI and automation adds topline growth in practice:
The offering expansion prediction and nurturing: an analytical AI model that identifies offering gaps per customer and recommends what to sell next, activated across CRM, sales dashboards, email, LinkedIn, and e-commerce. In its first launch, one market, one product offering, three channels, it produced three automations. Scaled to three markets, three offerings, and five channels, the same use case generates 36. That is the compounding logic the program is built around.
AI-powered product recommendation engine for tenders and RFPs: an AI agent that matches incoming tender specifications to product SKUs by compatibility, availability, price, and historical fit. Recommendations surface directly in the tender desk’s workflow, reducing response time and improving bid quality and consistency.
A proactive order management monitoring agent: AI-driven agent that continuously monitors order backlog for high-value customers, scores each order line for delivery risk, and proactively alerts sales with recommended next actions.
Outcomes
Six months into implementation, following a three-month planning phase, the program has already delivered:
- 50 automations live and approximately 100 automations in year one, ahead of the original program target
- Program is tracking ahead of the original value creation plan, with net sales impact from the automation portfolio already being monitored and validated
- Results are tied to a performance-based pricing model: Avaus’s fees are linked to the commercial outcomes delivered
- The operating model used is now being adopted beyond the Commercial AI Program, with Dustin applying the same principles and ways of working to other value creation initiatives across the organization
- The operating model is designed to continuously improve as the program matures, with processes, measurement approach, and steering already adapted in the first six months to reflect what the team has learned to improve effectiveness and quality of operations
- Managing stakeholder alignment and cross-functional collaboration across approximately 50 stakeholders spanning relational sales, online sales, e-commerce, marketing, IT, analytics, and data teams
KPIs
- 50 automations live after first two quarters of active implementation
- +170% increase in use case development output from first quarter to second
- ~50 stakeholders across markets, channels and functions effectively collaborating via operating model