Leveraging AI for Retail – Finding Value in Data

Leveraging AI for Retail – Finding Value in Data

Retail organizations today are using AI to analyze customer preferences and behavior. Organizations today are very enamored with artificial intelligence capabilities to find hidden patterns and tease out issues in data and text. Each organization is trying to find an advantage over its competitors. This explosion of interest in AI poses a challenge to managers for effectively make sense of and use AI effectively.

The most nimble and adaptable companies and executives will thrive. Organizations that can rapidly sense and respond to opportunities will seize the advantage in the AI-enabled landscape. (Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew Mcafee, HBR,)

The reality of AI in the retail space is that the machine learning parts of AI heve been used for at least 25 years. These take the form of statistical AI such as correlation matrices and affinity anaysis in marketing to understand aspects of consumer behavior. More recently, this has included sentiment analysis to understand what consumers think of the organization and certain applications of neural nets to help with choosing sizes of clothes. .

AI carries with it many implications. Jobs change and current skills become obsolete and displaced. Service bots such as chatbots replace customer service staff. Many aspects of automation now focus on AI. The impact of AI on operations is well known in service industries such as retail or hospitality. Today customers are using technology more and more, just ask any travel agent what happened to their jobs. So, what impact do these changes have on organizations that serve the retail segment?

Managers and professionals should prepare for the coming changes. What happens when AI becomes part of the work process? What can we expect from AI capabilities today? What may happen in the future? Answers for these and other questions are part of the value of this course.

Expected learning outcome:

• Explain the different uses of AI today
• Understand the techniques used for the different types of AI capability
• Explain some uses of AI in retail
• Explaining the technology available for AI
• Interpret how AI can help retail organizations
• Select appropriate AI techniques for retail
• Understand the limits of AI
• Interpret social media data to understand candidate interests
• Suggest operational opportunities for AI

Who should attend

This course is key for managers, strategic planners, marketing analysts, data analysts and architects, planning managers, process analysts, business analysts, business, enterprise and IT architects.

Meet your expert course trainer: Frank Kowalkowski

Frank Kowalkowski is President of Knowledge Consultants, Inc., a firm focusing on business performance, business analytics, data science, business architecture, big data, business intelligence, predictive analytics and statistical techniques. He has over 30 years of line management and consulting experience in a wide variety of industries. He has been involved with many projects both as a user and purveyor of business analytics. He has worked projects in state and federal government dealing with back office operations, legislative compliance and regulatory compliance. He has worked on the federal level with the national defense department, Coast Guard for drug interdiction and other projects. His background includes a number of industries including manufacturing, distribution, supply chain, banking, insurance, financial institutions, health care, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas and chemicals.

More recently Frank has been involved in conducting workshops, professional training sessions and assessments of architecture, data science, governance, compliance, risk and process management efforts. He also develops algorithms for analytics tools particularly semantic algorithms as well as data analysis techniques.

He is often a keynote speaker, panel moderator and member at international conferences as well as a conference chair, he has written numerous papers and spoken at conferences on a variety of business subjects. He conducts frequent seminars nationally and internationally on a variety of business management, analytics and information technology topics. He is the author of a 1996 book on Enterprise Analysis. His most recent publications are a featured chapter in the business book “Digital Transformation: Using BPM You Already Own.” for publication in 2017. His chapter is titled “Improve, Automate, Digitize”, he also has a chapter in the business architecture book titled ‘Business and Dynamic Change’ June, 2015 and a chapter on semantic process analytics in the book Passports to Success in BPM published in 2014 all are available on Amazon.

Knowledge Consultants. Inc. (KCI)

Knowledge Consultants, Inc. is a professional services firm founded in 1984. KCI provides consulting and professional education services. With over 50 courses taught worldwide, KCI provides the opportunity to develop core strengths in the following certification areas:

• Process Management
• IT Management
• Business Performance Management
• Business Analysis
• Analytical Techniques for Business
• Business and IT Architecture

KCI has expanded its training and consulting efforts internationally into Europe, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. KCI has an outstanding list of current and past clients including many of the Fortune’s 100 companies.

Consulting focuses on the key areas of Business Performance Management, Process Management, Business and IT Architecture, Business Analysis, Using Analytic Techniques for Performance Improvement and IT Management.