This is not a new demonstration format. It follows our existing public-case verification process. The underlying facts come from an official Kearney public case. We isolate the later-stage answers first, then reconstruct what was knowable at the time of the decision into a teaching data pack. Minerva Advisor completed one paid live run on this material, and what you are seeing is a verified replay of that actual Decision Room session. This is an independent teaching simulation built on an official public source. It is not real correspondence, not real client results, and Kearney has not used, reviewed, endorsed, sponsored, certified, or commissioned Minerva Advisor.

The case opens with a large automotive parts retailer struggling with duplicate parts, overlapping systems, supply chain inefficiencies, and inconsistent experiences across channels. Online retailers have raised customer expectations, while traditional competitors are simultaneously upgrading their own store formats and online shopping experiences. Leadership must decide whether to commit immediately to full omnichannel integration, or first validate customer needs, parts data, systems, and supply chain dependencies through a time-boxed pilot on a small number of high-value customer journeys.

Every run leaves an auditable receipt of five work items. Minerva draws on one official source, identifies four decision-relevant personas, separates six established facts from two reasoned inferences, and surfaces three open questions that remain unresolved. It then compares two competing paths forward, and preserves three alternative explanations along with one explicit reversal condition. Executives can trace every judgment back to these five items.

What is known: customer experience has already suffered, and competitive pressure is accelerating from both traditional rivals and online retailers. What remains unknown: which specific customer journeys drive the most attrition, how much of the problem stems from duplicate parts, overlapping systems, and supply chain issues versus in-store operations, and which dependencies can be safely separated without new risk.

The strongest challenge to this recommendation is that the cross-channel breakdown may already be a system-wide issue, meaning a narrow set of pilot journeys might not represent the full parts and store network, and waiting to isolate root cause could cost the company its competitive window. The reversal condition is explicit: if the same breakpoint recurs across multiple journeys and rollback is feasible, the decision should reverse toward full-scale integration.

To test independent judgment, the published answer was deliberately excluded. Kearney's later-stage peer benchmarking, customer needs research, analytics-driven pilots, the new business-to-business-to-consumer partnership model, the redesigned in-store expert experience, the resulting technology architecture, and the reported revenue and cost outcomes were all withheld from Minerva's input. Only what was knowable at decision time was provided.

Three advisor personas cross-check the same judgment from different angles. Marcus frames the real decision as which journeys qualify for early integration. Sofia models the consequences across customer, store, supply chain, and digital platform functions. Evelyn stress-tests whether a small pilot can represent the broader network. All three converge on a time-boxed pilot of high-value journeys, with Evelyn specifically warning that choosing only the easiest journeys would understate duplicate parts and supply chain dependencies.

The executive responds with one added condition: the pilot must cover customer conversion, parts data accuracy, store fulfillment, and supply chain accountability, and the company must be prepared to scale up immediately if the same breakpoint recurs across journeys. The system records this as a logged response receipt, testing whether executive input changes the underlying judgment.

Comparing the two options directly: immediate omnichannel integration could accelerate a consistent customer experience, but it risks locking an unvalidated architecture and unclear data boundaries into the business permanently. A time-boxed pilot validates customer need and dependencies first, at the cost of continued short-term inconsistency. Testing the executive's added condition against both paths does not change the underlying recommendation.

The committed action is the pilot path. Customer experience, store, supply chain, and digital platform teams are directed to select representative journeys covering online, in-store, and fulfillment breakpoints, establish clear data ownership, define service and inventory safeguards, and set explicit stop and scale-up thresholds before any system-wide commitment. Minerva makes no claim that any partnership model, architecture, or outcome has actually occurred.

This Kearney case passed all ten out of ten decision quality checks. The actual run used four model calls, delivered its first decision-ready judgment in 16.228 seconds, and completed the full result in 23.451 seconds, passing the formal thresholds of 30 seconds for first decision and 45 seconds for complete results. This remains a single-case test of the product, not a measure of production service levels or real customer outcomes.