UST launches retail sector GenAI platform

  • September 17, 2024
  • William Payne

UST has unveiled its ‘UST Retail GenAI platform’ at the London Innovation Lab. Purpose-built for retailers, the UST Retail GenAI Platform delivers tools to optimise retail operations, from logistics to customer experience. The platform combines established business models with key GenAI capabilities such as search, summarisation, automation, and creation.

The platform maps the alignment between GenAI and business capabilities, allowing for more effective decision-making. The UST Retail GenAI platform enables retailers to pilot GenAI-driven solutions, test various scenarios and outcomes, accelerate innovation, and optimise operations. Retailers can conceptualise and plan their AI strategies with the help of scenario cards, which integrate the ‘Enterprise knowhow’ to address specific challenges.

Steve Rempel, SVP & International CIO at Walgreens Boots Alliance, spoke at the launch and spoke about critical success factors the UK retailer tackled to enable GenAI adoption, including the need to appreciate the trust cycle while planning various investments. UST’s CEO, Krishna Sudheendra, spoke about how UST is training 25,000 employees on GenAI.

“At UST, we’ve partnered with six of the world’s top ten retailers, transforming their businesses. While AI is already transforming retail operations, we still need to unlock its full potential. The UST Retail GenAI Platform offers a structured approach for exploring generative AI scenarios, marking a significant milestone in our mission to revolutionise retail operations through the power of generative AI. This is aligned to our focus on building platforms that can help scale the adoption of GenAI-led ways of working,” said Krishna Sudheendra, Chief Executive Officer, UST.

The benefits of investing in digital transformation and specifically AI were echoed in a recent survey commissioned by UST, where respondents cited building resilience to cope with future disruption the highest, increasing profitability, and improving sustainability as key outcomes of technological advancements within their business. UST AlphaAI consolidates the company’s AI offerings to enhance business agility, streamline operations, and accelerate digital transformation journeys.