How Microsoft is Driving Retail Innovation with AI and Azure at Shoptalk Fall 2024

Ann Mazenga: 00:00:00

Hello everyone.

Ann Mazenga: 00:00:01

Welcome back.

Ann Mazenga: 00:00:02

This is Omni Talk Retail.

Ann Mazenga: 00:00:03

I'm Ann Mazenga.

Chris Walton: 00:00:04

And I'm Chris Walton.

Ann Mazenga: 00:00:05

m the floor at shop Talk fall: 2024

Ann Mazenga: 00:00:10

And standing between Chris and I is a wonderful partner of ours who's helping make all of our content possible.

Ann Mazenga: 00:00:17

From Microsoft, we have Margaret Seinen.

Ann Mazenga: 00:00:21

And before we introduce you, Margaret, I just want to give a quick shout out to Microsoft and in thanks for their partnership on this.

Ann Mazenga: 00:00:29

Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and every organization to achieve more.

Ann Mazenga: 00:00:33

You can learn more about how together tech and people can realize the promise of AI responsibly at Aka Ms.

Ann Mazenga: 00:00:41

Alat, Microsoft and Narvar.

Ann Mazenga: 00:00:45

Narvar is the leader in post purchase intelligence.

Ann Mazenga: 00:00:48

Narvar empowers retailers to drive revenue, reduce costs and streamline operations, all while delivering exceptional customer experiences.

Ann Mazenga: 00:00:55

You can stop by and see Narvar right here, right down below at booth L 45 or visit themarvar.com dot.

Ann Mazenga: 00:01:02

Now let's get to the most important thing.

Ann Mazenga: 00:01:04

Margaret Seinen, Azure sales director at Microsoft for retail and consumer goods.

Ann Mazenga: 00:01:08

Welcome to Omnitalk.

Margaret Seinen: 00:01:10

Thank you, Anne.

Margaret Seinen: 00:01:10

And thank you Chris, for having me.

Chris Walton: 00:01:11

Thank you.

Chris Walton: 00:01:12

Yeah, no, it's great to have you.

Chris Walton: 00:01:13

It's day two of shop talk fall.

Chris Walton: 00:01:15

That's what conference we're at.

Chris Walton: 00:01:17

Tell us a little bit about your area of expertise and your role at Microsoft, if you don't mind.

Chris Walton: 00:01:20

Get us started.

Margaret Seinen: 00:01:21

Yeah, so Microsoft has a us subsidiary and within that we have a group of customers that fall within the retail and consumer goods organization.

Margaret Seinen: 00:01:30

And so I actually work within that division.

Margaret Seinen: 00:01:32

So there's approximately over 300 customers in the enterprise that we actually look after.

Margaret Seinen: 00:01:37

Wow.

Margaret Seinen: 00:01:38

I and my team specifically, we focus on the Azure platform.

Margaret Seinen: 00:01:42

And what I would say is that we actually help customers solve problems and do the best that they can in terms of getting the value out of that platform that they've invested in.

Chris Walton: 00:01:52

And for the average maybe merchant or, or maybe design person in retail that might be watching this too.

Chris Walton: 00:01:58

What is the Azure platform, if you don't mind, for the neoplight in technology?

Margaret Seinen: 00:02:02

It's like a personal data center on steroids.

Margaret Seinen: 00:02:06

That's what I would say.

Margaret Seinen: 00:02:06

So it just allows you to develop applications or leverage pre designed, pre configured applications and you can manage the application yourself or Microsoft can manage it for you and you can just deploy the infrastructure services if you want to.

Margaret Seinen: 00:02:19

So it's very customized is what I would say.

Chris Walton: 00:02:23

Yeah, right.

Ann Mazenga: 00:02:24

Margaret, what's the key message that you and the Microsoft Team are kind of trying to get across to people you're talking with, you're meeting with, you're seeing on stage here at shop talk fall.

Margaret Seinen: 00:02:34

The spectrum is so wide here.

Margaret Seinen: 00:02:36

This is because not only Azure do we sell, but we've also got productivity suite, we've also got CRM and enterprise resource planning solutions as well.

Margaret Seinen: 00:02:45

So the conversations have been quite broad.

Margaret Seinen: 00:02:47

But what I would say is most of the customers here are wanting to understand what the customer journey is and how we can actually improve it with our technology.

Margaret Seinen: 00:02:56

They're also wanting to make sure that we can help them and support them with personalization.

Margaret Seinen: 00:03:01

And they're also wanting to enhance the customer experience that our store associates have as well.

Chris Walton: 00:03:07

Oh, okay, cool.

Margaret Seinen: 00:03:08

And then also linking data with supply chain.

Margaret Seinen: 00:03:11

And this is all underpinned in the new world of Genai.

Margaret Seinen: 00:03:14

And so every conversation we have is essentially customized and we're meeting the customer where they are.

Chris Walton: 00:03:22

That's really great.

Chris Walton: 00:03:23

So data for supply chain, improving the store associates experience, and then of course marketing personalization too.

Chris Walton: 00:03:29

That's a really good trifecta.

Chris Walton: 00:03:30

That's very well summarized.

Chris Walton: 00:03:32

Nice job.

Chris Walton: 00:03:32

I might borrow that in our recap tomorrow actually, because that was really well said.

Chris Walton: 00:03:37

I love it.

Chris Walton: 00:03:37

All right, so one of the themes is also unified or omnichannel commerce.

Chris Walton: 00:03:41

How are you thinking about that in your role at Microsoft as well?

Margaret Seinen: 00:03:44

So when I look at unified commerce, I think it's three components that you need to focus on.

Margaret Seinen: 00:03:49

So first is the user experience, the second is operations, and then the third is the technology that underpins all of that.

Margaret Seinen: 00:03:56

And what I would say is we've got many, many examples where we're actually leveraging Genai, but we're also looking at ways that we can automate processes.

Margaret Seinen: 00:04:07

We're looking at ways that we can improve processes and making sure that we increase their top line, but also improve their bottom line as well.

Ann Mazenga: 00:04:15

And what's ahead this year?

Ann Mazenga: 00:04:17

Like, we've talked about quite a few things, especially how you're thinking at Microsoft about this idea of unified commerce.

Ann Mazenga: 00:04:24

But what are you, what announcements are there coming up or what's ahead for holiday that you really think retailers and brands need to be paying attention to?

Margaret Seinen: 00:04:31

There's a massive event that Microsoft's having in Chicago in November.

Margaret Seinen: 00:04:34

It's Kord ignite.

Margaret Seinen: 00:04:35

And I'm actually embargoed at the moment to share anything that's going to be announced.

Ann Mazenga: 00:04:42

Is the time.

Margaret Seinen: 00:04:43

It is the time.

Margaret Seinen: 00:04:43

So that's end of November.

Ann Mazenga: 00:04:45

End of November.

Chris Walton: 00:04:46

You gotta go to ignite.

Margaret Seinen: 00:04:48

Well, you can join remotely all the tickets have been sold out.

Chris Walton: 00:04:50

Oh, wow.

Chris Walton: 00:04:51

All right.

Chris Walton: 00:04:51

Okay.

Ann Mazenga: 00:04:51

I can only imagine, Margaret, I can only imagine what wonderful things will be announced at that meeting.

Margaret Seinen: 00:04:57

What I would say is, with AI, we've been doing a lot of proof of concepts in the last twelve months since we sort of started to embed a lot of that AI technology in our productivity suite.

Margaret Seinen: 00:05:08

But what we're doing now is we're seeing a lot of customers that have a lot of in house talented.

Margaret Seinen: 00:05:13

They're actually moving beyond the proof of concept now and we're actually deploying a lot of solutions.

Margaret Seinen: 00:05:18

And I can go through some of those.

Ann Mazenga: 00:05:19

Yeah, let's hear it.

Margaret Seinen: 00:05:20

And I'll do that in a moment.

Margaret Seinen: 00:05:21

But what this is all being underpinned with is responsible AI and security.

Margaret Seinen: 00:05:27

And so that is paramount to anything that we do at the moment.

Margaret Seinen: 00:05:30

And I can go through the six responsible AI components that we focus on, if I can remember that.

Ann Mazenga: 00:05:37

It's all right, we got time.

Margaret Seinen: 00:05:39

You tell us to.

Margaret Seinen: 00:05:40

I'll probably give four examples.

Margaret Seinen: 00:05:42

So there's a large pharmaceutical company, or not pharmaceutical retailer, where we've actually helped provide a virtual assistant.

Margaret Seinen: 00:05:52

So what it enables you to do is ask a very prompted question.

Margaret Seinen: 00:05:55

So I'm a male, I have really large pores.

Margaret Seinen: 00:05:59

I'm wanting to look for a particular product that will not make my pores look so large.

Margaret Seinen: 00:06:05

So what we're able to do is actually customize a search engine so that you can come up with not only products that are available on the shelf, but the store that it's located and available in, whether you want it delivered in person, or it can go with your demographics as well, but also actually looking at prescription content and making it far more understandable about if you were to go to a medical practitioner in terms of what you could actually request to manage that beauty problem that you may have as a male consumer, if.

Chris Walton: 00:06:39

You have large pores.

Margaret Seinen: 00:06:41

Exactly.

Chris Walton: 00:06:42

Hopefully she's not talking about me, folks, but.

Chris Walton: 00:06:44

All right, let's get you out of here on this.

Chris Walton: 00:06:46

So I heard a statistic yesterday, shared some research, was done by a gentleman, Holden Bale, and he said that 50% of retailers still are not feeling like they are capitalizing on generative AI in any substantive way.

Chris Walton: 00:06:59

Do you agree with that?

Chris Walton: 00:07:00

Or, and if so, like, what is holding it back?

Margaret Seinen: 00:07:04

It's definitely the legalities and the privacy and the security.

Margaret Seinen: 00:07:09

So what we're finding is that for us to do anything a proof of concept, we have to go through the legal bodies of a customer and making sure that privacy and personalization is all adhered to, and all the HIPAA and the requirements, particularly in the pharmaceutical area, needs to be adhered to as well.

Chris Walton: 00:07:26

So that's so a big roadblock.

Chris Walton: 00:07:27

People are trying to cross their t's and dot their I's before they move forward.

Chris Walton: 00:07:30

But we expect that to probably change here in the future, too.

Chris Walton: 00:07:33

Right.

Chris Walton: 00:07:34

I, they'll feel like they're substantially making an impact inside their organizations here at some time horizon.

Chris Walton: 00:07:39

What do you predict that will be?

Chris Walton: 00:07:41

Do you have any idea when that number will shift?

Margaret Seinen: 00:07:44

Well, what I'm finding is if there is a lot of in house talent or there's a great partner solution that is adherent and complies to everything, I'm finding that the progress is actually advancing at the moment as well.

Chris Walton: 00:07:55

It's advancing pretty quick.

Chris Walton: 00:07:56

Just depends on the organization.

Ann Mazenga: 00:07:58

It benefits everybody to get that figured out as soon as possible.

Margaret Seinen: 00:08:01

Yeah.

Ann Mazenga: 00:08:02

All right.

Ann Mazenga: 00:08:02

Well, that wraps us up.

Chris Walton: 00:08:03

That wraps us up.

Chris Walton: 00:08:04

Thank you to Margaret Signan of Microsoft for being with us today.

Chris Walton: 00:08:07

Thank you to Microsoft and Narva for sponsoring our coverage here at shop talk fall.

Chris Walton: 00:08:11

You can see the exhibit hall behind us.

Chris Walton: 00:08:12

It's bustling.

Chris Walton: 00:08:13

And until next time, Ann, be careful out there.