What does AI Entail for Retail?

Welcome back to the Enterprise AI Playbook, Issue 10. Here are the successes, cautionary tales, and deep dives from this week.

Successful launches - Ikea reaching for the top (shelf)

After starting a pilot program in 2021, Ikea has expanded its drone use with more than 250 drones operating across 73 locations, in nine countries. These drones are used to move inventory, combining computer vision and routing approaches.

“The IKEA drones use an artificial intelligence-based algorithm to identify and photograph product storage locations. In addition, drone flights are pre-scheduled, utilizing a custom indoor positioning system to navigate higher levels of storage locations (for levels 3 and up).”

The press release also mentions that employee well-being should be improved with work shifting to lighter and more ergonomic tasks. We’ll see if this trend holds true, or if it will lead to layoffs as warehouses become more automated.

Full read.

Cautionary Tails - Getting lost in the delivery

Best Buy recently announced its use of AI in a delivery tracking app update, but didn’t identify where it was used. In a brief press release, Best Buy mentions: “Today we’re excited to announce a new live tracking feature, leveraging AI solutions, that will make the Best Buy delivery or installation experience more convenient than ever.”

AI is not mentioned again, and unfortunately, this continues a trend of AI buzzword soup, sprinkled in for flash without substance. In this case, I assume the AI is the routing algorithm but it is hard to tell.

Conversely, Walmart gave a very clear use case for AI, using LLMs to “create or improve more than 850 million pieces of data in its product catalog”. The application and ROI are clear “it would have taken 100 times longer to do this manually”.

Full Best Buy release and Walmart reads.

Deep dive - Building your AI team

Last week, I walked through a blueprint for building AI based teams, here’s a quick snapshot of the topics covered for both managers and job seekers:

00:33 - Key Skills and Team Roles

04:26 - Evolution of AI and Team Requirements

06:32 - Building AI Teams: Strategies and Examples

15:45 - Team Structures: Horizontal vs Vertical

20:55 - Build vs Buy: Outsourcing Strategies

23:11 - Reviewing AI Engineer Resumes

31:41 - Crafting Effective Job Descriptions

34:16 - Qualifications and Expectations

37:05- Interview Questions and Assessment

42:06 - AI Skills Maturity: Crawl, Walk, Run

You can find the full video on our youtube channel.

Question to ask your team

How clear is your use of AI in team and company wide announcements?

Until next week,
Denys - Enterprise AI @ Voiceflow