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How Microsoft is Redefining Retail with Generative AI · The Retail Podcast

0:00
Hello and welcome to the retail podcast.
0:02
Now I've had the pleasure of seeing Keith actually was I
0:06
think last year at Shop Talk Spring when Microsoft had a, a
0:10
room to the one of the sides and you were one of the, the, the
0:14
speakers there, Keith. And for Full disclosure, I have
0:18
known Keith from my previous life at Microsoft, but that
0:21
shouldn't stop us talking about some of the awesome things that
0:25
I know Keith has been travelling the world telling people what
0:28
about what Microsoft is doing. But Keith, for those people who
0:31
don't have that intimate knowledge of who you are and
0:34
what do you do, How about you tell us who you are and what do
0:36
you do at Microsoft? Of course.
0:38
And first of all, thank you for Alex for having me on the retail
0:41
podcast. So excited to be here.
0:44
I grew up in retail. I spent 27 years working for
0:47
Gap. It's in my blood.
0:48
So I love having retail conversations.
0:51
But for the rest of you, I am the Vice President of the
0:54
worldwide retail and consumer goods industry team at Microsoft
0:58
and our role is to work with our top retail and consumer goods
1:03
customers globally. We are all ex industry folks.
1:06
We I always call us the great translators of customer business
1:11
problems into ways that Microsoft technology and
1:14
Microsoft partners can help solve those problems.
1:18
So thanks for having. Yeah, I know.
1:20
And I and I think it's a testament to how well Microsoft
1:23
has grown within the retail community, how your team has
1:27
basically been able to address those major issues and what a
1:31
time it is for those major issues.
1:34
So I mean, I'm, I'm really curious.
1:36
You, you meet executives day in, day out.
1:39
I know. I'm surprised you're at home, to
1:41
be honest, right? You're not.
1:42
It's, I mean, the airport somewhere.
1:44
Yeah. What's well, what's what's the
1:46
thing that's top of mind right now?
1:47
What are what are people coming to you?
1:49
And talking to you about or wanting to talk to you about.
1:51
I mean, it's really about a gentic AII mean the the pace at
1:56
which this technology is changing and the importance that
2:02
executives realise that it can have on their business is
2:05
probably unparalleled than any other technology that I've ever
2:08
seen. So they really want to
2:11
understand how can they uniquely adopt these capabilities to
2:15
reduce cost, to give better customer experiences, to build a
2:20
more agile supply chain, and honestly make use of the
2:24
incredible value of data that they sit upon.
2:27
And retailers have an incredible amount of data.
2:30
And for years they generate data, but they haven't been able
2:34
to really unlock the value. So with generative AI, agentic
2:38
AI, they're seeing finally this uniqueness of how they can take
2:41
that competitive advantage and put it to work to change and
2:45
transform their organisations. If you don't mind, if we do like
2:50
a quick one O 1 on what a gentic is, because I think sometimes I
2:55
mean, it was the IT was sort of the on on stage at shop talk
2:59
this year, shop talk spring. It was like, you know, a gentic
3:01
is just from from the person who's in data and AI.
3:05
You you tell us what is a gentic.
3:07
AI yeah, yeah. And I'll start back from when
3:09
generative A kind of first came on, you know, came in the market
3:13
with GPT, which was this natural language interface, which which
3:18
you could ask questions, generate content.
3:21
And that's that's where we started.
3:22
And it taught us all how to have the power of the prompt, right.
3:27
The output was only as good as the input.
3:30
And we all had to learn how to do these inputs.
3:33
So at Microsoft we took that capability and started launching
3:36
Co pilots and Co pilots were the ways you could access your data.
3:40
It's the way you could help generate that first draught of
3:43
an e-mail. And that's really where we
3:45
started. Now you layer on a gentech and
3:48
the good news is we believe Co pilot is the UI for all AI.
3:52
So the way we will communicate with agent with agents in the
3:56
future is the same way we've been communicating in the last
3:59
year and a half by using prompts.
4:01
But agents now can do more than where we started.
4:06
So the first thing is more about retrieval, going out and finding
4:10
a piece of information and bringing that back to you.
4:12
You're still directing it using natural language.
4:15
Then it will move to tasks, so performing a task on your
4:18
behalf. So I think about the marketing
4:20
function and every campaign starts with a brief and we used
4:25
to use Co pilots to write that first draught of the brief.
4:28
Now we can have an agent write the first draught of the brief,
4:32
and once we build confidence in that agent, over time we will
4:36
see those agents act autonomously and start to
4:40
generate briefs on their own based on the insights the agents
4:44
are seeing in the business. And that is really the unlock of
4:47
value because now the human intervention is still always
4:50
going to be there, but it will be significantly less than it is
4:55
today, which means we as humans, we'll be able to do higher level
4:58
thinking, think more strategically, and take a lot of
5:02
that kind of lower level work, like brief generation and
5:06
business insight, you know, analysis.
5:09
The agents will be doing that on our behalf and surfacing those
5:12
insights and recommendations to the humans.
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And we could just say, Yep, keep moving forward.
5:17
So that is really going to change the game in terms of
5:19
humans and agents working alongside of each other.
5:23
I know Satya, maybe one month or two months ago, he gave an
5:27
interview where he said it was the death death.
5:30
I can't remember the death of Sass or Sass is gone or I don't
5:33
know. I'm just curious.
5:35
Was that just, was that like a sound bite someone took or is
5:38
that genuinely how Microsoft is actually seeing it because you
5:41
have so many products underneath your agentic just from a
5:45
Microsoft perspective, if I'm the Microsoft customer?
5:48
And in the spirit of that comment is around if you think
5:52
about the number of business applications that we use to do
5:56
our jobs everyday. So if you are in a marketing
5:59
function, you probably have some data that's sitting in Excel,
6:03
you have some data that's sitting in some type of web
6:06
analytics tool. You have other data sets that
6:08
are sitting in in your advertising tools.
6:11
And all of those are individual business applications that
6:14
you're going in and out of every day to gather data.
6:18
So you can do some analysis potentially in a fourth tool
6:20
like Excel. Yeah.
6:22
And what we're, what we believe is that agents will now be the,
6:27
the systems going in and interacting with that.
6:30
So we don't have to do that any longer.
6:32
And we'll simply use natural language as our communication
6:36
and UI through a Co pilot. So you no longer have to go in
6:40
and out of all of these different business applications
6:43
to get your insights. The agents will be doing that on
6:45
our behalf and we'll just be asking questions.
6:48
And it doesn't matter where the data sits any longer, right?
6:51
It doesn't matter if it's in this tool or that tool, as long
6:53
as you trust the data, as long as the data is secure and
6:56
compliant, then we'll let the agents do that work on our
6:59
behalf. So I think the spear of that is
7:01
more about natural language will be the UI throughout your Co
7:05
pilot, which was how we'll start to interact with disparate data
7:08
sources across the entire company.
7:11
Yeah, I mean we, I mean that makes perfect sense.
7:13
So thank you for. Yeah, of course.
7:15
Clarifying that, I remember from days gone by, we used to talk
7:19
about retail operating at 2 speeds in terms of, you know,
7:24
almost people that have structured the data, people who
7:26
have spent time, energy, money and effort over over the years
7:31
getting some form of structured data.
7:34
And then you've got this other sort of wheelhouse of retailers
7:38
that haven't done anything and everything lives in silos.
7:43
I'm just curious. I I guess this this question
7:45
breaks into a couple of points and I'd love to know if I'm a
7:48
Microsoft customer and I sit in in those two worlds, does a
7:52
gentic AI actually help me or no, sorry, you still need to get
7:57
your data into some order. That's the first question.
8:01
And then if I'm not a Microsoft customer, but I'm, you know, I'm
8:04
saying here, listening, going, holy cow, this really sounds
8:07
like, you know, I I'll be with the dinosaurs.
8:09
If I'm not going ahead, I'm doing, you know, Where did you
8:15
start? What does it look like?
8:16
Well, I love. It we're having a data
8:17
conversation, because it is, I always say every generative AI
8:22
conversation always leads to a data conversation.
8:25
You can't have one with the other, right?
8:27
You can't. And you, you said it, Alex, like
8:30
retailers traditionally have siloed data.
8:33
It's just how they've been built.
8:35
You know, many started as brick and mortar and built entire
8:39
organisation and tech stack around that.
8:42
Then they launched e-commerce and that was a different data
8:44
set. Maybe they went into a different
8:46
model or wholesale, whatever. But the disparate data silos
8:50
have been a challenge in the industry and for years.
8:54
You're right, many retailers have been working to bring these
8:58
this data together. It's hard, it's expensive, it's
9:03
slow. It's really a process.
9:05
And what we're seeing now is we've launched the data platform
9:11
that Microsoft called Fabric that is less about breaking down
9:14
the silos. It's leave the data where it is.
9:16
We can just help you extract what you need.
9:19
Well, so you can build that first AI use case.
9:22
And I'd say what we're seeing in the industry is this like I've
9:26
got to get my data house in order before I can even start.
9:29
And yes, that's true. But we have ways to help you
9:32
fast track that. And we're, that's where we're
9:36
spending a lot of time with our customers today is let's pick a
9:39
use case. Let's look at the data sources
9:41
that drive that particular use case.
9:44
Let's unlock those first. Let's feel good about the data.
9:48
Let's make sure it's secure and compliant, and then let's launch
9:51
a use case. And I think that has been
9:53
actually one of the barriers we've seen.
9:55
We've seen a lot of our customers launch a lot of Pocs
9:58
last year, but they've kind of got stuck in this pilot
10:01
purgatory where they have been able to move to scale.
10:04
And we really want to help them take those use cases to scale.
10:08
And the data unlock is is key to that.
10:11
I mean that that's a wonderful segue in terms of obviously we
10:15
can dwell on the whole data and AI element, but I can on the
10:19
second speed where people are moving at blistering speeds.
10:23
What are some of the use cases that have really sort of
10:26
impressed you? Yeah, on your travels around the
10:29
world. Well, you know, there's two that
10:31
we're seeing a lot of traction and there's many, but I'll, I'll
10:34
talk about two. And I like to talk about these
10:36
two in conjunction because one of my roles many, many years
10:40
ago, that gap was when I first started, I was a sales
10:43
associate. It was my first job.
10:45
I was in high school and I was folding jeans and I was, you
10:48
know, I had to learn everything about our products.
10:50
We had this printed manual and we studied it every season.
10:53
So I could talk about features and benefits, but we didn't sell
10:57
very much. It was jeans and T-shirts and
10:59
sweaters. It was relatively easy, but I
11:02
think about the complex nature of the sales associate today in
11:06
retail and some of the products that customers and offer and how
11:11
do you learn everything about all your products in a confident
11:16
way where you can just help a customer on the sales floor.
11:19
And I've always said, you know, retail brick and mortar is very
11:23
service rich but very data poor. And this is where agentic AI is
11:29
going to help bring the necessary data into the
11:32
fingertips to the associate at the moment they need it, which
11:36
is the moment they that matters with that customer.
11:38
And I'll I'll tell you a great customer story with me to mark
11:41
Saturn. If you don't know them, they're
11:42
yes, I'll see 3 Taylor in Germany.
11:45
I'm in that carry a very broad range of a highly complex and
11:50
very similar products across many brands.
11:53
And they've launched this my buddy in in my ear Co pilot that
11:58
is a on demand basically phone a friend to ask a product question
12:03
and have it answered in your ear while you're working live with
12:07
the customer. And it really is changing the
12:09
game of how they can answer questions about think about, you
12:13
know, big screen televisions. I have 5 of them that look very
12:16
similar. They're different brands.
12:18
The price point's very similar. How do I explain to a customer
12:21
what the differences are? So yeah, my buddy has been a way
12:24
to help bring that information into the front line worker at
12:28
the moment they need it. So bringing that that data along
12:31
with the service, now I'm going to take you to the e-commerce
12:34
world. And that was a role I also had
12:36
at gaps like I have to run the e-commerce business for a while.
12:38
And you kind of have the opposite problem.
12:40
It's actually very data rich, right?
12:42
Data is just a click away on the web, but it's very service poor.
12:46
There's no one there. You're you're kind of
12:48
self-guided, right? And e-commerce hasn't even
12:50
changed very much in 20 years. You've got your navigation
12:53
across the top, some categories down the left, your search box,
12:58
but that's kind of it. So conversational commerce is
13:02
changing how customers solve problems.
13:07
So if you're trying to throw a World Cup watch party for 10
13:13
friends, what should I buy? Well, you might need drinks, you
13:18
might need snacks, you might need a large screen television
13:22
and a great sound system. So companies like Walmart are
13:26
bringing that type of conversational commerce
13:29
experience to the web. And what they're seeing is it's
13:34
their customers are moving from this kind of scroll based
13:37
shopping to goal based shopping. And we're seeing other brands
13:41
launch this and we're seeing increases in basket size.
13:44
We're seeing speed through checkout, which are all great
13:47
signal that consumers are engaging on this and they're
13:51
finally able to shop by solving their real problem versus kind
13:55
of searching for things. So those are two of my
13:57
favourites and that we're seeing today.
14:00
And and so just just to sort of understand that in terms of the
14:02
Walmart use case that you were saying you were talking about
14:05
there. So just so I've got a clear in
14:08
my head, I'm I'm having a BBQ. Is that me?
14:11
Instead of typing with the e-commerce page or site I'm
14:17
talking to, it is that is that it's.
14:19
Oh, can you just. Yeah, it's right.
14:21
You're actually seeing not only, and now they haven't launched
14:24
this yet, but we're actually seeing multimodal where you're
14:27
saying, I've got this a hiking shoe.
14:31
I, I want something just like it.
14:34
And you're holding it up to the camera and have an agent behind
14:38
that camera who's recognising that and comparing that to your
14:41
product catalogue. So it's text, it's voice.
14:45
And very soon you'll start to see multimodal commerce where
14:49
you as a user can interact with different ways that are most
14:52
comfortable to you and helpful. So where Walmart is starting
14:56
right now is they've added more conversation to their search,
15:00
but we'll eventually move to a full conversational commerce
15:03
experience. Other examples are Bath and Body
15:06
Works in the US has launched full conversational commerce
15:09
where you can literally ask a natural language question around
15:13
I'm, I'm looking for a gift from Mother's Day.
15:17
What ideas do you have? I mean something like ask a
15:20
sales associate in the physical store.
15:23
I think, I mean, that sounds a little bit like because I saw
15:26
the CEO founder of Perplexity sort of saying that's what
15:31
they're trying to build or building or training their
15:34
models to do. But obviously as a retailer, I
15:37
want to own and have as much control of that.
15:39
Why would I want some? I mean, obviously I'll, I'll be
15:42
open to all channels, but why would I want someone else to
15:45
have that data on, on my business?
15:47
So that makes so much sense because I I, yeah, I remember.
15:51
The point on data is important, one, because what we haven't
15:53
talked about in the case of conversational commerce, imagine
15:56
if you're a fashion retailer and you offer that experience and a
16:00
woman comes and types in. I'm going to a wedding in Greece
16:05
in June. Can you suggest an outfit?
16:08
Yeah, of. Course.
16:09
And now as a marketer, I now know it's, you know, it's early
16:15
May and next month you're going to Greece in June.
16:18
I've got some real context to start marketing to you about.
16:22
Well, here are some great items you should buy for sightseeing
16:25
while you're in Greece. And have you thought about a
16:27
swimsuit for the beach in addition to the out that we
16:29
recommended for the wedding you're going to be attending?
16:31
So you could start to see how the data capture of
16:34
conversational commerce is very strategic for retailers because
16:38
I'm getting more context about you as a shopper, I could hand
16:42
that back to your customer data profile so I can use that in the
16:46
future. So it's really opening up this
16:48
opportunity for true personalization that we haven't
16:51
seen before. And I think that's another
16:54
unlocked. It's not just the the the
16:56
existing customer experience that we're going to see, but
16:58
it's this incredible data capture that's going to come out
17:01
of it. Yeah, and it makes so much
17:03
sense. What do you see as the blocker?
17:06
What's the barrier? If you were going to do a CHEAT
17:08
SHEET, you know what? What's holding people back?
17:12
I think there's a few things. I think 1 is I talked about, we
17:15
talked about data is like how do I start to think about my data
17:19
strategically? And, and it was a this, this
17:22
isn't the CI OS problem. This is the CEO and the
17:25
executive leadership team is a retailer's data is very
17:28
strategic because it's incredible about their customer,
17:31
about their products. It's unique to them.
17:33
So there's that. There's the second part is how
17:36
do I start to get off and running with with a use case?
17:41
And part of that is assigning some business value.
17:43
So we do spend a lot of time with our customers helping them
17:46
prioritise use cases around business values.
17:49
They know which ones that are going to, you know, offer the
17:52
most cost savings or revenue uplift, whatever the KPIs are
17:56
they're trying to drive. So I think that's the second 1/3
17:58
is organizationally, you know, it's these are going to change
18:02
the way we work, right, right. And if you, if you've had a
18:05
chance to use a Co pilot everyday, I know I do in my job,
18:08
I'd have to change the way I work everyday because I now have
18:12
a Co pilot that I can go to first to ask questions and
18:16
summarise my emails and tell me what I missed when I was out
18:20
last week on vacation. That's very different way of
18:23
working than I used to. So yeah, it's going to change
18:25
the way teams work together. It's going to change the way
18:28
functions work. So I think that kind of cultural
18:32
change and organisational change is also another one.
18:37
It touches on in terms of you were talking about this bimodal
18:40
or, you know, trimodal in terms of voice, text and image.
18:45
Yeah. In terms of when you look at the
18:47
future then I don't know if you talk about quantum computing and
18:51
the chip, but forgetting that for one second, practically when
18:56
you then think about the future of retail, it feels like you're
19:00
describing this sort of multi sensory e-commerce world, right.
19:05
Is that, is that where we're going?
19:07
But I think it's a world where shoppers are finally going to
19:12
get the level of service in stores that they that they
19:16
crave. And I think as frontline workers
19:20
are finally going to get the data that they want at the
19:23
moment that matters. It's going to help their jobs be
19:26
more enjoyable. It's going to make them feel
19:27
more confident when they work with customers.
19:29
So I think we're going to start to really see those things come
19:32
together in ways that keep associates happy in their jobs
19:36
that make cut. Edwards and associates.
19:38
You think today, when a customer and a sales associate has a
19:40
conversation that is dark data, it goes away and there's some
19:45
really valuable information in there.
19:47
So I think in the future, when you think about conversational
19:50
commerce capabilities, we'll capture that data.
19:54
And finally, retailers will be able to deliver on that promise
19:57
of personalization that they've been really going after for
20:00
years. So I'm excited because I think
20:02
as a shopper, our experiences are going to be elevated.
20:06
It's just going to happen. As a retailer, our ability to
20:09
learn more about you and use that with your permission to
20:13
make your future shopping experiences better is finally
20:17
going to happen. And, and that frontline worker,
20:20
you know, who's been so underserved for so many years as
20:23
a persona is going to be happy doing their jobs because they're
20:26
going to have these incredible digital tools in their hands or
20:30
in their ear that are going to bring that information that they
20:33
need and just help them get through their day, just like we
20:36
are every day in the office. So I, I'm excited by, you know,
20:40
about how it really is going to raise the ceiling for everybody,
20:44
but also raise your floor for everybody.
20:46
So I think that's really exciting.
20:48
Do you think I mean you, you touched on a really important
20:51
point and I don't know how many read because just going back to
20:53
the perplexity or, or search, so many, I mean, when Alexa came
20:57
out, people were like, oh, this is fantastic until they, and a
21:00
couple of US retailers, large ones realised that all of those
21:04
search terms invoice, they had no idea.
21:08
They, they had absolutely 0 idea what people were searching for.
21:13
And it feels like people or retailers haven't woke up to the
21:16
fact that, yes, there's lots of great platforms out there, but
21:20
that data isn't yours. You're not going to be able to
21:22
get context on that. And, and I remember from years
21:26
gone by, Microsoft was really sort of it's your data, you,
21:29
you, you get access to all of that.
21:32
We don't do anything. We just give you the cable.
21:33
Is that still the case? Is that like because it's such a
21:36
fundamental point? Yeah, definitely.
21:38
Like we're not training our models at 1 customer and taking
21:43
them to another. I always say each instance of AI
21:47
is kind of like your own child that you're raising with your
21:50
data. Got you.
21:51
And that stays? But it's a really important
21:53
point. I think it's so important.
21:56
Yeah, we, we definitely obviously having like, like
22:00
retailers must have a trusting relationship with their
22:03
customers. We need to do the save.
22:06
So when we talk about our AI that runs in Azure, that is
22:10
being utilised by retailers to build conversational commerce
22:13
experiences or build frontline worker experiences, that is all
22:16
trained on the retailer's data. That is their unique first party
22:20
strategic advantage. So obviously that stays there.
22:24
So every platform is unique. Just like today when a customer
22:28
runs on Azure that that data is not commingled with any other
22:32
customers that run on Azure. It's very walled off that way.
22:36
It's critical. Yeah, no, OK, that's, it's good
22:39
to hear because I think that's that's something that people are
22:42
sleepwalking into, if I'm honest, you know, well on that
22:45
point. Though I would say what is
22:46
really becoming critical security, because if you think
22:50
about democratising data and putting it into the hands of
22:54
folks that might not normally have it, but you're doing it
22:57
because it's going to bring value, it's going to save money
23:00
and time, it's going to allow for new experiences.
23:04
How you secure that data is now more critical than ever because
23:08
obviously we know when when there's a trust break between a
23:11
data breach at a retailer takes many years for trust to be built
23:15
back. So we always talk a lot about
23:18
security as well, or I always say get us your chief, get your
23:22
your chief information security officer involved early and often
23:26
when you're doing AI use cases because you want to make sure
23:29
that everything you do is still within the guide.
23:33
The guise of like secure and responsible AI, which is the
23:36
other bookend of that is using this capability in a responsible
23:40
way that make it your customers feel confident it doesn't
23:43
violate privacy laws. So all of that is in critical to
23:48
all of these use cases as well. It's foundational, honestly.
23:51
I think, well, I mean, look, we've had so many public cases
23:54
recently in the UK with two major retailers having outages.
23:58
I mean, there's, there's it's like who hasn't had a security
24:03
or cyber event? I get, I guess it gets
24:06
overlooked because people sort of almost think that the Ciso's
24:09
taking care of it where, you know, it's a culture thing as
24:13
well, right? You need everyone on the same
24:14
page. Yeah, but in this world of
24:17
privacy, GDPR and everything else, there's a whole another,
24:21
you know, how are you protecting the critical data that you're
24:25
gathering on, on your on your customers?
24:27
No one wants to know that their their AI data set has been
24:31
stolen. I think that's that's another
24:34
level from your credit card. But again, that's like we're
24:38
getting into I think that's a little bit further down the line
24:41
that people, people need to be aware of it in, in terms of
24:45
where you are going to be focused on for the rest of the
24:48
year. Is that due?
24:50
Because obviously Microsoft again operates in, you know,
24:53
four or five different product areas, right?
24:56
Cloud security teams, what a workforce in playing what, what
25:01
are the things that you're going to be like?
25:02
How is the rest of the 2025 going to be for you?
25:06
I'd say we're seeing this adoption of a Gentek AI mean
25:10
this is going to, as I said earlier is helping our customers
25:16
think about natural places to adopt.
25:19
And I think, you know, marketing content creation is a great
25:22
example. I talked about that earlier.
25:25
You know, I think about business analysts, the merchandising and
25:28
the, and the inventory management sides of the world.
25:30
I remember, you know, my days at Gap, every Monday morning, our
25:34
inventory folks would come in, our merchants would come in,
25:37
They'd spent 4 hours kind of diagnosing the business.
25:41
And that was about 20 people doing that, right?
25:44
So there was like 80 hours, 80 human hours every Monday
25:49
diagnosing the business. And then in the afternoon, my
25:52
leadership team and I, there's five of us, we would decide what
25:55
we were going to do about the business in the course of an
25:57
hour. And I think about the imbalance,
25:59
80 hours spending, diagnosing 5 hours spending making strategic
26:04
business decisions. That's an imbalance, right?
26:08
We we need to unlock more of that 80 and shift it to more
26:12
strategic thinking. And that is where a gentek is
26:15
going to make a real impact. You know, maybe those eight out
26:19
those eight, you know, 80 hours become 20 hours because over the
26:22
weekend agents have been diagnosing the business.
26:25
So when when the merchandising team comes in and Monday morning
26:28
the insights are ready, some recommendations are already teed
26:33
up and maybe even in the future of autonomous, the first draught
26:38
of the marketing brief has already been written on the
26:41
promo that needs to run as a result of last week's business.
26:44
Like imagine that happening and being kind of ready on the
26:48
desktop Monday morning. And that is really game changing
26:52
when you think about running your, your, your retail
26:54
business. Yeah, I mean, you, you, you
26:56
touch on a this isn't, this isn't going to be a self
27:01
promotion about a book, But I, I like many people, I've written a
27:05
book about the future of retail, but I talk about the store being
27:08
your signal generator, right? So all of the signals that the
27:11
store's generating that you then need to respond to, whether
27:15
that's a, a TikTok trend that has been, you know, going up and
27:20
up and up. And if you don't tap into it or
27:22
it's a Netflix movie that has, I don't know, blown people away
27:26
and people want that jumper in that colour.
27:28
Those signals are currently, you know, again, we're going to that
27:32
people are trying to sort of chip away at those types of
27:35
problems. Yep.
27:36
But the store is a is this is a data centre.
27:39
There's petrol bytes of data that's going to come out of that
27:41
store and and how do you tap into it?
27:44
So I think the signal story is is brilliant because it's also a
27:49
data problem, right? So if you know they're right,
27:54
traditional store signal sits in rows and columns, right?
27:58
That's it. A TikTok video is an
28:01
unstructured data source. An Instagram feed is an
28:03
unstructured data source. So something that's trending on
28:07
a social platform is mostly unstructured data.
28:11
So really it's how do you take both?
28:14
How do you take the traditional structured data from the store?
28:18
And by the way, you multiply that by miscue count, by region,
28:23
by store, right, by how many countries you operate in, plus
28:28
all the unstructured data. And how do you take all of that
28:31
signal and turn that into some recommendations on what you
28:35
should do next, whether that's what you should be buying next
28:38
year because there's a trend that's emerging that you want to
28:41
make sure you capture on or whether it's responding to out
28:45
of stocks in a location based on a significant change in weather
28:50
and all of that signal and resiliency is where generative
28:54
AI, a gentic AI is going to play a role.
28:57
It's it's you just can't throw enough humans at it.
29:00
It's just impossible. It's costly, it's slow, it's
29:04
filled with bias. Like this is where I think we're
29:07
going to see such that this really step function changes.
29:10
Retailers will finally be able to kind of take all that data
29:14
signal back in even from your commerce, like all that data
29:17
exhaust that comes from all the clicks and the movement and
29:21
really make sense of it in real time and start to act on it in
29:26
real time. And that's going to be really
29:28
incredible to watch. Where, where, where is is mine?
29:32
Where's Mike? I know Microsoft has the biggest
29:34
presence at NRF, which is also, I don't know are you anywhere
29:38
else throughout the year is Microsoft, are you at any other
29:41
events or is there anywhere else people?
29:43
Could still definitely it's one. More plan have a.
29:45
So retail NRF in New York is definitely a big one.
29:49
NRF Asia, we have presence there in June, say cool.
29:53
Those who are going to be there with definitely be there
29:56
talking. Stage Yeah.
29:59
And then we also on the consumer goods side of the business, we
30:02
go to the consumer goods forum every year and present.
30:05
And then this year, I'll be at camp, there's a lot of our
30:08
customers, marketers go to Can and we have some events planned
30:12
around that, specifically around how generated by Agentic AI is
30:16
transforming the marketing room of the house.
30:19
That's fantastic. Well, Keith, thank you so much
30:21
for giving up some time to speak to us.
30:24
It's probably early in the morning for you there, right?
30:27
It's not so bad. It's not so bad.
30:28
That's wonderful. Not bad at all.
30:30
And thank you Alex. It's just a pleasure always to
30:33
chat with you. We've I've always liked chatting
30:35
with you. We've never had a problem
30:37
talking. So in six months, let's do it
30:39
again because a lot will change as we know and we'll we can give
30:43
an update. Well, hopefully, maybe maybe
30:46
joking aside at NRF 2026 with. Less 2.
30:50
Yeah, wonderful. Thank you.