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Intelligent Automation for retailers

1 Mins read

Intelligent Automation is a suite of capabilities or products that leverage advances in technologies like Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Deep Learning and Optical Character Recognition to digitally enable semi-autonomous and autonomous process execution.

These capabilities have evolved from just advanced process automation products to being pivotal in supporting day-to-day process execution across stores and business operations teams. They find broad application across core retail operations – Finance, Stores, Supply Chain, Merchandising, Digital/Guest touch points, Marketing, etc.

For a retailer, store employees (or team members as they are known at Target) sifting through various sources of information to provide the right information at the right time to customers can be a daunting task. Day-to-day process execution is also typically inefficient without access to real-time support. Typically, store team members spend thousands of hours managing inventory availability, looking for information on store layout or even store fulfillment. Every minute spent on such tasks means lesser time spent interacting and connecting with customers.

Through the use of the right technology, retail organizations can automate such processes and deliver superior guest experiences while enabling time and cost efficiencies. Conversational AI is one such capability that can be deployed across stores. Leveraging these bots, store team members can save hundreds of hours spent on manually looking for the right information and instead spend that time paying more attention to guests and help create memorable shopping experiences for them.

Another example of a process where retailers can readily leverage intelligent automation is store inventory management, especially in the management of out-of-stock scenarios. AI-powered conversational chatbots can enable short conversations through a chat engine to retrieve information or initiate a transaction, helping optimize tasks, so store team members can get real-time updates and information on the inventory and on-shelf availability. A host of features and services, such as providing real-time insights, analytics and dialog management can also be built on top of the chatbots.

As retailers continue to invest, pilot and scale Intelligent Automation capabilities, the possibilities are endless and so are opportunities to help all families discover the joy of everyday life in more engaging ways!

Authors

Deepak M Subramanian, Director,  Products - Process Innovation & Intelligent Automation
Deepak M Subramanian | Director Products – Process Innovation & Intelligent Automation 
 Rajasekar.Gopalakrishnan, Senior Director, Technology, Core Data Services
 Rajasekar.Gopalakrishnan | Senior Director, Technology, Core Data Services