Extracting Value from Your Retail Data | 2024 Event Recap

In an era where the demand for AI solutions is rapidly growing, effectively managing and extracting value from retail data has become more crucial than ever. Stakeholders are increasingly looking for practical applications of AI to enhance decision-making, customer experiences, and operational efficiency.

Genzeon's recent panel event at Terrain Café in the Philadelphia suburbs brought together industry experts to address these timely challenges, focusing on actionable strategies for leveraging data and AI in the retail sector. The discussion highlighted real-world insights and solutions, underscoring the importance of staying ahead in this dynamic landscape.

The panel was moderated by John McKenney, AVP of Retail Architecture and Strategy at Genzeon, who brought extensive experience from his previous role at IKEA. The panelists included industry leaders from the greater Philadelphia metro region:

• Paul Reigel, IT Director Enterprise Reporting and Marketing Systems, URBN
• Nagu Nambi, Head of Advanced Analytics and Data, Wawa
• Prashant Krishnakumar, VP, Data, AI, and Analytics, Genzeon
• Lee Sobotkin, Principal Architect, Boomi
  
  

Avery Amaya, VP, Strategy & Growth atGenzeon (third from left) poses with attendees (left to right) Scott Zelley (Revzilla), David Wertheimer (Chmny.app), Matt Dunphy (commercetools), Jenn Mallach (Bloomreach), and Brad Kurisko (Tydo)

Key Themes and Insights

The discussion revolved around practical applications of data and AI in retail, with a focus on real-world challenges and solutions rather than abstract theories. The conversation was grounded in the everyday experiences of the panelists, each of whom brought a unique perspective to the table.

“I don't think anybody has an idea right now what is the best answer. What I'm looking at is trying to be tactical of what I can improve.”
-- Paul Reigel, URBN 

AI Adoption and Challenges

One of the key topics was the challenges associated with AI adoption and implementation in the retail sector. Paul Reigel emphasized that while AI offers significant potential for productivity gains, it is still difficult to measure its effectiveness. He noted, “We classify anything we want to do as either a productivity gain or some sort of cost or savings gain...The productivity side is very difficult to measure per se. I don't think anybody has an idea right now what is the best answer. What I'm looking at for in my space is trying to be tactical of what I can improve.”

Nagu Nambi from Wawa echoed similar sentiments, explaining how AI has been a part of their operations for years, particularly in areas like product recommendations and supply chain optimization. However, the emergence of generative AI has pushed the technology to the forefront, necessitating structural changes within the organization. Nambi highlighted the importance of AI governance, stating, “We have an AI governance subcommittee...we have security practices [and] risk practices that we are validating. What should be the vendor contracts? Because when you push the data out, they would be using that data.”

“Is this problem that they’re trying to solve [with AI] the real problem or is it a symptom of something else?”
– Lee Sobotkin, Boomi

Practical Applications and Real-World Successes

The panel also discussed the real-world applications of AI and data analytics in retail. Lee Sobotkin from Boomi shared insights into how their company has been using AI for years but emphasized the need to walk through a maturity model to assess if AI is the next step for a company. “There’s this false viewpoint of just ‘I’ll take AI, it’ll solve all my problems.’...I’m also trying to evaluate is this problem that they’re trying to solve the real problem or is it a symptom of something else?”

Prashant Krishnakumar of Genzeon introduced the GEM framework, a structured approach to moving AI projects from proof of concept (PoC) to production while ensuring scalability and addressing common challenges. He noted that many AI projects struggle to reach production due to issues like insufficient ROI and the complexity of scaling solutions.

Future of AI in Retail

Looking to the future, the panelists were optimistic about the potential of AI to transform retail, but they also acknowledged the hurdles that remain. Krishnakumar highlighted the evolving landscape of AI, particularly with the rise of generative AI, which is opening new possibilities that were previously out of reach. However, he cautioned that not all AI solutions are scalable, and businesses must carefully consider which problems are suitable for AI intervention.

The discussion also touched on the role of AI agents: small, specialiazed models designed to perform specific tasks autonomously. Sobotkin explained how these agents could be used to streamline operations, from building data pipelines to automating customer service interactions. However, he stressed the importance of governance and control to ensure that AI is used effectively and responsibly.

Continuing Conversation

This specific data and AI conversation expanded onto social media shortly after the event. In one LinkedIn post and exchange, Kelly Goetsch, Chief Strategy Officer, and Matt Dunphy, Lead Solutions Engineer, of commercetools spoke to the applicability and hype of AI adoption. Goetsch at the end of his post wrote, "Give it 5, 10, 20 years and yeah we'll see a lot of real-world AI adoption. But for the time being - AI is still largely hype with no meaningful real-world production use cases."

Source: LinkedIn comment

In response, Dunphy, who attended the August retail event, noted, "Two themes that stood out to me [from the event]. Copilots are a tremendous productivity boost - but not a replacement for developers. And customer service could benefit from AI chatbots, but we're not there yet, and in fact the more likely winning combination is involves AI agents - a real person monitoring these otherwise automated interactions."

Event content themes as mentioned by attendees and captured in Tagio, a Salesforce app

Conclusion

The Genzeon retail panel provided valuable insights into the current state and future direction of AI and data analytics in the retail industry. The discussion highlighted both the opportunities and challenges of implementing AI in a practical, business-focused manner. As AI continues to evolve, companies will need to balance innovation with governance, ensuring that they can extract maximum value from their data while maintaining trust and security.

Over 30 local area retail technologists attended the event from diverse retail and technology companies like Revzilla, Flymingo, Wawa, URBN, Boomi, JW Pepper, IKEA, and more. Attendees enjoyed both the in-depth panel discussion and the interactive networking happy hour session.

Genzeon plans to host additional retail and healthcare technology regional events in the future. For more information, please visit the Genzeon events page.

Photography credit: Michelle Montgomery, Michelle Montgomery Photography.