Is Artificial Intelligence at a point of no return for companies? Sonae MC, Jerónimo Martins and LTP explained the importance of applying this technology in the sector they represent, in the first session of FórumIA.
Artificial Intelligence has become a strong ally of food retail, where it currently plays a decisive role in the survival of businesses and the growth of operations. The relevance of having users in the retail sector with more digital skills, the need to increasingly focus on training human resources and creating in-store experiences and aggregating sets of information to improve consumer experience and corporate decision-making , were some of the conclusions of the first session of ForúmIA, which took place yesterday – Artificial Intelligence in Portugal, under the theme “Artificial Intelligence in the Retail Sector”. Held by INCoDe.2030, the event brought together around 300 participants and was moderated by AI Portugal 2030 Strategy Coordinator, Alípio Jorge.
SONAE MC, one of the participant companies, is a pioneer in innovating products, processes, procedures and establishing a closer and more personalized relationship with the customer. Liliana Bernardino, Head of Customer Intelligence at SONAE, has no doubts in stating that “Artificial Intelligence is solving the problems of our operation and our management. The Continente card adopted a process of innovation and enabled the leverage of a communication strategy, organization of products, ranges and stores, based on Customer Behavior, and this was only possible through the implementation of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning techniques”.
For Rui Tomás, Director of Innovation and Consumer at Jerónimo Martins, there are areas where Artificial Intelligence is very important in the group. “In terms of customer experience, taking as an example Pingo Doce & Go on Universidade Nova’s Campus in Carcavelos, AI allows us to provide a good customer experience. From design to machine operation. The automated way of buying, returning, registering and paying makes the customer’s purchase much easier. Another area is in operational essence. One of the experiments we have done, using artificial intelligence and which has been successful, is AgroBusiness, which involves raising cattle and with the help of Machine Learning we can predict issues such as the animal’s slaughter date or control the distribution of animals across space” .
The current context caused by Covid-19 was also not forgotten in this debate, having been pointed out as one of the key points to trigger all these technological changes. Luís Guimarães, Co-founder of LTP Labs, underlines that the pandemic “has transformed the way we shop and certainly in the future there will be an increasing need to have a chain that feeds both dimensions, physical and digital space. It is important to align these two spaces to face challenges that we have already faced in the past, as well as to obtain a retail supply chain operation that meets the needs of replacement of products in physical stores, home delivery models or in-store collection models” .
Nuno Feixa Rodrigues, General Coordinator of the INCoDe.2030 Program, highlighted the importance of digital skills at all levels. Without forgetting to point out that “there is a very important element that is the user, that is, it is a fundamental part of the retail system and having users who have more digital skills will also be a fundamental element in order to innovate and ultimately expand the boundaries of these technologies. If we manage to do it in Portugal as a testing and development laboratory for new solutions, it seems to me that it will be quite important.”
Gonçalo Lobo Xavier, General Manager of APED, highlighted the role that the pandemic played in the need to create new in-store experiences and improve the consumer experience and here “we talk about Machine Learning and personalized recommendations based on consumer preferences, which serve for large corporations, but also for SMEs. We also talk about the growth of e-commerce, which created opportunities for small businesses and small associates who were not expected to enter e-commerce, but which Artificial Intelligence helped in the choice of products to present and in the need to shape the operation to the behavior of the consumer, not only in e-commerce, but also in physical stores”.
Ana Cristina Caldeira, Inspector Director of the National Operations Unit of ASAE, highlighted a project carried out for 18 months on economic food inspection, developed by a multidisciplinary team from ASAE, “in the sense that we can contribute with our data, because they are effectively important in the area of Public Administration, but they have to be worked on. The risk matrices that we apply daily were converted into computer models, that is, we use data science to help us and apply our risk matrices in the selection of economic products, and in the matter of evaluating complaints and claims. It is a major factor in our daily operational activity and in other issues related to economic operators”.
Carlos Soares, External Adviser for Intelligence Systems, from Fraunhofer Portugal and Professor at the Faculty of Engineering of The University of Porto, highlighted the importance of creating knowledge through scientific research and developing human resources through training. “The most common way for Universities to collaborate with companies in this and other areas is master’s theses; however, in relation to my experience with this type of projects, this is not the most effective way to maximize the added value of all the related parties. One of the initiatives I am involved in to try to trace a more interesting path for both sides is called IA Store, which uses Artificial Intelligence aimed at retail, is a partnership launched by Accenture, Fraunhofer and the Faculty of Engineering of Porto , which is based on the AI skills of these partners and takes advantage of their synergies to provide innovative solutions from a scientific and technological point of view. The focus has been on large national retailers, but it is our medium and long-term goal to also create technologies that reach smaller companies”.
Sofia Azevedo, from the National Innovation Agency, said that the next funding program will have 95.5 billion euros for research and innovation. “The pandemic has shown that there is a need to change paradigms, so the negotiation in terms of priorities and public policy has changed. The next framework will bring a generous amount of €2 billion for two Artificial Intelligence programs. One of them is Horizon Europe and will have artificial intelligence opportunities spread throughout the program and the other is called Digital Europe, which solves the problem that technologies must reach citizens and companies. This program is based on Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and High Performance Computing”.
This was the first of a series of sessions that will be held throughout the year, where we will seek to know, understand and learn from the developments of research and innovation in Artificial Intelligence in Portugal. The next FórumIA session is scheduled for early April.