Welcome to the Age of "Supervised Automation"
In this Retail Technology Spotlight series, Chris Walton sits down with Antons Sapriko, Founder and CEO of Scandiweb, to explore just how far AI has already gone in running the operational layers behind retail and what happens when employees shift from doing the work to supervising the systems doing it for them.
Antons breaks down the evolution from AI assistance to what Scandiweb calls "supervised automation," where AI increasingly handles everything from personalization and pricing logic to purchase order reconciliation, software development, and the modernization of legacy systems. The conversation also explores Scandiweb's OperaLayer, an operational layer designed to sit across disconnected systems and give retailers the real-time visibility and decision-making capabilities their existing technology was never built to provide.
But perhaps the biggest question is what this transformation means for the people inside retail organizations. As repetitive work becomes automated, Anton argues that the future may belong to a new generation of AI-savvy generalists who can identify the problems worth solving, supervise intelligent systems, and rethink workflows that have simply become accepted as "the way things have always been done."
From replacing spreadsheets and connecting decades-old ERP systems to building AI models that can replicate a leader's decision-making process, this episode explores what it really takes to become an AI-native organization and why the path to autonomous retail may be much more practical and incremental than most people think.
Key Topics Covered:
- 00:01:36 - How AI is already taking over parts of retail operations
- 00:06:09 - The shift from AI assistance to supervised automation
- 00:10:35 - Where retailers are seeing the biggest AI opportunities today
- 00:13:07 - How AI can modernize legacy systems without a complete rip-and-replace
- 00:17:35 - Inside Scandiweb's OperaLayer and connecting disconnected systems
- 00:21:52 - What happens to employees when AI takes over repetitive work
- 00:24:24 - Why the next generation of retail leaders may need to become generalists again
- 00:26:52 - How successful retailers identify the right workflows to automate
- 00:33:33 - How close are we really to autonomous retail?
- 00:36:29 - How retailers learn to trust AI with real operational decisions
Over 8 years and nearly 200 episodes, the Retail Technology Spotlight Series has featured some of the biggest names and boldest thinkers in retail. Explore the full archive here: https://omnitalk.blog/category/spotlight-series-podcast/
Sponsored Content
00:00 - Untitled
00:06 - Exploring AI in Retail Operations
05:27 - The Rise of AI in Retail
11:50 - The Role of AI in Modernizing Legacy Systems
24:00 - The Evolution of Roles in AI-Driven Organizations
25:40 - The Transition to AI in Organizations
33:05 - Transitioning to Automated Commerce
38:54 - Transitioning to Autonomous Retail
This Retail Technology Spotlight series podcast is brought to you by the Omnitalk retail Podcast Network.
Speaker AHello everyone, I am Chris Walton, your host for today's interview, an interview in which we are going to explore the question of how far has AI already gone in running retail operations and what happens to the people who used to run those operations they trust when they.
Speaker BSee their data, their process and AI recommending or doing the same things that their best employees doing.
Speaker BEach workflow that is built can be self corrective, self improving.
Speaker AIt's also being able to do work that you weren't ever able to do before, which is the crux of what we're going to talk about today.
Speaker BI myself, I replaced my role within the company about one and half year ago in terms of resourcing management.
Speaker AReally some work is just too hard to get done by humans.
Speaker AAI isn't waiting for a press release moment to take over retail and it's already running pieces of promotional planning, merchandising, and perhaps most interestingly, the software development behind the platforms retailers use.
Speaker AEvery day we talk a lot about AI copilots and assistants in the industry, but not nearly enough about the moment teams stop doing the work and start overseeing it, that's a much bigger shift.
Speaker AAnd I got news for everybody, it's already underway.
Speaker ASo to help us explore this very topic and, and the question at hand, I am pleased to introduce Anton Spirico, the founder and executive chairman of ScandalWeb.
Speaker AAnton, thanks for joining us.
Speaker AI'm really excited to talk to you about this topic.
Speaker BHello Chris, thanks for inviting.
Speaker BReally glad to talk about this topic.
Speaker BThat's what it's really at the edge and where we see some real breakthroughs are happening with retailers.
Speaker AYeah, it's really mind blowing.
Speaker AIt's really transformational too.
Speaker ABut you know, before we get into the meat of the discussion, which I know there's going to be a lot of meat on the bone for this conversation today, Tell our audience a little bit about yourself because I was doing, I was doing some background research on you and your, your, your background is really interesting and I think it's, it'll give the audience a good perspective on who it is and why you're an expert on this subject.
Speaker BYeah, thank you.
Speaker BI started as a company 23 years ago and we still run it with two co founders.
Speaker BIt's still privately held.
Speaker BWe started with a small web studio back in Latvia.
Speaker BNow we are around 500 people working globally and naturally, well, our focus is E commerce and commerce.
Speaker BAnd over these 20 plus years we have seen a lot of interesting shifts in how people were shopping from desktop, from mobile, where platforms were deployed, data center on premise, cloud, now AI, naturally.
Speaker BAnd that's the most multifaceted, multi age, because it's both a channel where retailers now sell and being discovered.
Speaker BIt's also a tool because as you just mentioned, you can create a lot of software with AI that we definitely will speak later about.
Speaker BAnd at the same time it's something that can do the work.
Speaker BSo it's at least three in one and definitely there are more use cases of it.
Speaker BSo this transformation is so far the most exciting where I, I'm very glad we got that way.
Speaker BThis experience, this vision to meet this.
Speaker BYeah, exactly.
Speaker BIt's technology.
Speaker BIt's not a tool, it's not a channel, It's a technology, just like electricity.
Speaker BSo the applications of it are yet to come.
Speaker AThat's really good.
Speaker AThe comparison of electricity is really interesting too as we get into this, because, you know, it is, is going to potentially be that as impactful as the invention of electricity or probably even air travel in a lot of way.
Speaker AAs we use further analogies.
Speaker AI can't believe you started this company 23 years ago.
Speaker AFor those watching on video, you look way too young for that, my friend.
Speaker AThat's one thing I'll say.
Speaker AI wish I looked as good as you after running a company for 23 years.
Speaker B23 Years, yeah.
Speaker BSome years are stressful, some enjoyable, but looking back, it's quite a journey.
Speaker BBut I think AI brought a certain renaissance to us because it's, it's a change of such a magnitude that we really feel that we have reset, that there is a certain mental renaissance in our company.
Speaker AMental renaissance, That's a really good phrase too.
Speaker AI'm curious, Anton, when did that mental renaissance start in the company?
Speaker ADid it start when ChatGPT introduced itself to the world or were you all looking at this already before that?
Speaker AHow has the company approached that?
Speaker BYeah, well, we had some minor experiments with machine learning.
Speaker BSpecifically, some 10 years ago, we built a tool to track sentiment of our customers.
Speaker BSo it came with one painful event when customer unfortunately left citing bad service.
Speaker BSo we wanted to know what's happening before red flags appear.
Speaker BSo we integrated it in our service desk communication and then it helped a lot because teams could see real time satisfaction of their customers.
Speaker BSo that's a great example.
Speaker BWhen something that has not been measurable becomes miserable.
Speaker BReal time, then it, it has its impact.
Speaker BAnd I think our kind of massive mental renaissance came when OpenAI released their API so we got not just the chat as such, but we got access to state of the art LLM.
Speaker AIt's funny what you just said there too, because the other part I think about is too, it's like it's, it's also being able to do work that you weren't, weren't ever able to do before.
Speaker AWhich is the crux of what we're going to talk about today as well.
Speaker ASo like, I'm curious, how far has, in your 20 years of running this business, like where are we now in terms of how far has AI actually gone into running the operational layers that drive retail today?
Speaker ALike how would you answer that question?
Speaker AWhere are we in terms of the stages of it, of AI actually operating things?
Speaker BWell, I think what we have seen two years ago that AI has been assisting people.
Speaker BNow we see people supervising or judging, pretty much making a judgment across whether this suggestion is good or not.
Speaker BSo AI has been assisting, now AI is producing outputs and people.
Speaker BWell, yeah, people are supervised.
Speaker BSo it's kind of supervised automation as we call it with our customers.
Speaker BSo we do not aim especially working with large organizations, Fortune 500 and alikes.
Speaker BAutomation needs to have two, three, maybe four steps before, before that starting from okay, data infrastructure maturity and then eventually it should be supervised automation.
Speaker BAnd then when the number of incidents, when humans have been correcting AI drops well, then it can turn into fully autonomous process.
Speaker BWe see some parts of well defined workflows being in this quite advanced stage of supervised automation.
Speaker BIt could be personalization at scale, it could be pricing logic, it could be analysis of large volumes of customer data, certain segmentation options, product discovery through byproduct of LLMs.
Speaker BThey have so called vectorized representation of data.
Speaker BSo the search can be much better or it can become really conversational.
Speaker BSo there are many, I would say focused applications, focused segments of workflow where things turn from being AI assisted to autonomous under supervision.
Speaker BAnd of course AI in software development, the speed, the velocity is, it changes, as we say, the economics of which problem now you can solve.
Speaker BEvery merchant we have seen multi million, multi billion organizations, everybody has spreadsheets, all right, Old large spreadsheets, they could never tag them.
Speaker BIt felt like we need three business analytics.
Speaker BWe need this, we need that, we need and then it will take half a year.
Speaker BNow you can iterate already in a week you can have a solution.
Speaker BYou can iterate 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 times.
Speaker BIn a matter of weeks you will have something that would eventually replace the spreadsheets.
Speaker BIt would give observability of Change what you are doing there, better access control and eventually it will become part of your workflow rather than an isolated document.
Speaker BJust as an example.
Speaker BYeah, but AI in software development definitely brings like a magic wand to a capable E commerce director.
Speaker BBecause the challenge usually is seeing where you need to make a spell.
Speaker BRight?
Speaker BBecause some people are just like let's make it all autonomous and then somehow.
Speaker BBut if they really the what we usually call normalized problem, the problems they got used to, it's not a problem anymore, just how life is there.
Speaker BBut this exactly the areas that are very beneficial for change, once we change them, the impact is usually exponential.
Speaker ASo basically if I rewind what you said, you basically are saying that you're definitely seeing the application in the software development process within retailers.
Speaker AYou're saying at a 30,000 foot view, you know, as as much as people want to go to full automation, they're still really in the realm of like trying to implement what you said, supervised automation, which I think is another great phrase.
Speaker AYou're throwing out a bunch of great phrases for us already on this podcast.
Speaker ABut they're going to a realm of supervised automation.
Speaker ASo I'm curious then if you, if you, if you go into the retail organizations themselves, are there areas where the software is being deployed to specifically help with things like is it promotions, pricing, like what areas are you seeing retailers start to take this supervised automation approach the most?
Speaker BI see two kind of mutually distinct areas.
Speaker BSo one is it will look like the customer is being at the top, customer experience being at the top and then certain surfaces customer is interacting like a storefront and then backend what, what is underneath.
Speaker BCustomer doesn't see all the earpiece, warehouse management system, transport management system.
Speaker BSo we usually see that a success comes from going deep into the customer.
Speaker BSo personalization at scale, as I put it for our customers, that it's the first time in a history where millions of your customers can get a brand ambassador that works like your best ever best employee and is available 247 and serves just one person and it works.
Speaker BWe had few projects and I mean we work in commerce so they are transactional.
Speaker BSo personalization plus messenger gave a customer extent to conversions.
Speaker BLike the conversions increased 10 times comparable to traditional means.
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker BSo that's so powerful.
Speaker BAnd another kind of opposite side of of the same stack where we see AI is helping a lot is modernizing old legacy systems.
Speaker BSome of them are 30 years old, IBM or as 400 as they call it initially.
Speaker BWe modernize old systems giving them let's say capabilities that are necessary for this real time cross channel decision making.
Speaker BSo that's where AI helps a lot.
Speaker BWe, if it's.
Speaker BWell, at some point I can share about the platform we have built specifically to address that.
Speaker AI'd actually love to talk about that.
Speaker ABefore I do though, I want to make sure like I'm understanding that too is because one of the things I've been thinking a lot about lately is like, you know, one of the beauties of AI is like you said, there's all these legacy systems.
Speaker ABut in some ways if I'm, and I want you to correct me if I'm wrong here, but does a, I'm asking you a question about it.
Speaker ADoes AI now enable us to improve upon those legacy systems more quickly than we would have had the ability to otherwise in terms of trying to rip them out and replace them and do all the things that we couldn't do before?
Speaker ABut does AI enable us to actually kind of find ways to solve that problem of having to get away from legacy systems?
Speaker BYeah, absolutely.
Speaker BAbsolutely, yes.
Speaker BAbsolutely, yes.
Speaker BSo I would say it's a radically new venue now that AI offers for large businesses where we, we, we call it erp.
Speaker BChange is a hard surgery on the business so that sometimes we do, but it's right, right now we work on one replacement that customer wanted to do for 16 years.
Speaker BSo this is not a decision making pace you would expect now in, in our times, right to wait for something 16 years.
Speaker BBut what happens now?
Speaker BWhat, what is this, what is this new radical venue for.
Speaker BFor the merchants, businesses having all the RPS that are pain or a multi million project to replace and big risk for business continuity.
Speaker BSo what you can do now is to, to build an operational layer sitting above or in between these systems.
Speaker BSo with AI, well, I mean it's technically was possible before because in the end that's just a code and well, okay, certain AI affordances.
Speaker BBut before it would be as we have seen it would be a multi year, multi, multi million dollar project where there's a chance that stakeholder who started it would already quit or would leave.
Speaker ARight?
Speaker BSo now it's again it's this magic wand.
Speaker BBut you need to be clear with your wish or a gene in the bottle.
Speaker BYou need to be clear with your wish or what, what data you want to make real time, what system to connect in one say operational dashboard, not just informational but operational.
Speaker BAnd that's where we have seen an opportunity to create something reusable because certain rules, they stay the same single sign on certain data Protection, guardrails.
Speaker BWe call it Opera layer because it focuses specifically on operations.
Speaker BAs a commerce agency we, we see need for backends to support e commerce operations, ecommerce operations.
Speaker BThey need to be real time, they need to be comfortable, convenient.
Speaker BEvery update should be timely.
Speaker BAll promise on price or stock delivery should be fulfilled.
Speaker BRight.
Speaker BSo backend systems need to support this type of promise that we are doing on the storefront.
Speaker BAnd it's usually not the case.
Speaker BBut with AI, you can envelope them, you can wrap them into operational layer that would actually connect systems that were never meant to be connected or would make certain decision making layers on top of the systems that are used to be a books of record.
Speaker AGot it.
Speaker AAnd so Opera layer, why'd you call it that?
Speaker AI think, I mean, I think I get it.
Speaker ABut is it that, is it that blatantly obvious?
Speaker BIt's one of the colleagues who was the first to do this project, he, he somehow came from the obvious operational layer and a romantic root of Opera or the idea that you are.
Speaker BIt is like something that opera is usually something where you orchestrate many voices into something beautiful, at least to certain taste.
Speaker BAnd that's perfectly resonated with the idea of what he's doing.
Speaker AIt's a name that.
Speaker AI like the name and it's a name that makes a lot of sense too.
Speaker ABecause if, if I hear what you're saying, you're.
Speaker AYou're basically saying when we get right down to it, that you know, that, that the advent of AI is, it's not, it's not causing a situation where we need to replace or rip out the ERP system that a retailer is using.
Speaker AIt's really about giving the retailers or the teams that are using it decision making service that was never built in a way to provide that, to provide information or data that they could now get on their own.
Speaker AIs that the gist or am I missing something?
Speaker BYeah, exactly, exactly, exactly.
Speaker BYou are right on point.
Speaker BI can give you one example.
Speaker BYeah, just one example, maybe a few more.
Speaker BBut there is a reason Opera is modular.
Speaker BSo there is one module built for a B2B retailer.
Speaker BSo they have around 1 million products and thousand categories.
Speaker BSo they have a lot of category managers.
Speaker BThey are sending purchase orders to their suppliers.
Speaker BSo they are distributor, right.
Speaker BSo B2B distributor and then.
Speaker BAnd it's handled in ERP.
Speaker BAnd then they have warehouse management system and then incoming shipments are recorded there.
Speaker BHow's it cool.
Speaker BLike shipping notes, invoices were recorded somewhere else in the accounting system because they need to Be handled, paid or compliant with some local regulations.
Speaker BSo what has been happening is that at no point in time they had real understanding on what of their purchase orders are actually honored, completed or partially completed.
Speaker BThey did not really reconcile where what is being shipped and received is actually what they asked for in the right quantity, in the right attributes.
Speaker BBecause it has been across three or four systems and only at some reconciliation points like once a month.
Speaker BThey were getting somewhat delayed perspective on that.
Speaker BWell, naturally with computer vision, with image recognition, we could build a system that scans all the data, that gets the data from ERP, from vms, reconciles it together, validates, verifies calls for human intervention if necessary and gives a real time perspective as well as flagging every, let's say over deliveries or under deliveries that are actually urgent.
Speaker BSo they can react fast on that, not just okay with three, four weeks delay they can say oh actually these guys didn't deliver so we cannot ship.
Speaker BSo they finally for the first time they got real time picture of probably thousands of deliveries per month.
Speaker BSo not only in of course without any change to the erp, VMS or accounting practices.
Speaker BSo the OPERA layer just connects to all of them.
Speaker BSome of the systems don't have API, but there are many ways how we still can source data in a compliant, comfortable manner.
Speaker BNot only it gave them the decision maker, the decision making ease and velocity they never had.
Speaker BBut while we always talk about customer experience, there is also, let's call it enterprise experience of how people of what is experience of people working in an organization.
Speaker BWe see many times that brands advocate for certain, let's say high standards of at workspace, but the systems are antiquated.
Speaker BWhat do we see when, when a brand, when an organization gives such level of support, of operational support, it changes culture.
Speaker BSo it becomes a cultural artifact and a true, not only commitment, but real material step forward for the modernization of processes that positively impacts culture.
Speaker BThere is definitely ROI on that, but there is also some soft non tangible benefits that I believe are very important.
Speaker AYeah, that's one of the, that's a benefit of AI deployments in organizations.
Speaker AI never thought about that actually could increase the attachment of the organization or the desire of your people to work there because you're making their lives simpler every day versus them having to beat their heads against the wall to get the answers they're looking for.
Speaker AAll right, well, so let's segue then then Anton, because you know, I teased it at the beginning and this is actually probably the conversation that I personally am most excited about.
Speaker ASo let's let's say you have an organization that's, that's taking the opera layer approach.
Speaker AAnd you know, let's say they're, they're, they're, they're, they're doing that and they're kind of working on this idea of supervised automation like you said right now, what actually is happening at the team level that used to do that work by hand or used to do that work of checking things over on a monthly basis like you just described, what's actually happening at the organizational level.
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker BIn terms of, at a human level, at a personal level.
Speaker BWhat we see also in our organization, in our finance department for example, is that there used to be employees and customer organizations that were very valued because they could match three sources together fast.
Speaker BRight.
Speaker BThree spreadsheets, export something from collaboration software, match it, map, extract, make a pivot table like spreadsheet stars.
Speaker BSo this skill is, Is not in a demand anymore.
Speaker BAs soon as you automated it with AI, well, AI would help to map all the data together and eventually build the software.
Speaker BWell, there can be some, also AI decision making on some corner cases, edge cases.
Speaker BBut yeah, this type of skill is not necessary because AI is doing it real time every day 24 7.
Speaker BThese people usually, at least what we have seen in the organizations we have been working, they have more than one skill.
Speaker BSo these people usually stay to improve the system or eventually to envision how it can expand.
Speaker BBecause the road to AI native organization is not a one module.
Speaker BSo whenever there is a capable employee who helps to bring AI to improve it, to flag all, let's say cases that deviate and eventually, well supervise it and eventually let it go.
Speaker BWell, these employees are usually very demanded.
Speaker BTo bring the same mindset to some other areas that is repetitive takes time and possibly costs money.
Speaker ASo Anton, I'm curious because I was having this conversation with somebody yesterday too.
Speaker ASo let's say when the systems get in place and it does become more about supervision, are we going to see retailers gravitate towards more like general specialists, People that are more skilled in many different things than the traditional specialists because they're going to be managing, you know, so many agents down the line or how do you think about that question?
Speaker BIt's interesting question because just recently we were meeting with some like super old time customers and we are talking about E commerce directors specifically or E Commerce.
Speaker BYeah, that once we started these guys were like small entrepreneurs in the organization because everything was new.
Speaker BNobody knew how to service retail.
Speaker BWhat is order management system?
Speaker BWhat are your statuses?
Speaker BAlso Payment gateways were not there, shipping was not there.
Speaker BThere were no all this nice modern solutions that have now.
Speaker BSo they were inventing them.
Speaker BSo they were kind of very, very capable generalists.
Speaker AYeah.
Speaker BAnd eventually they had to specialize or actually to build their team who would specialize in customer data platform and personalization in organic traffic acquisition, paid traffic acquisition, customer experience experts, A B testers, conversion rate optimization and so on.
Speaker BSo there was so ample opportunities to go in depth and each, each vector would actually bring you return on investment.
Speaker BYeah, possibly.
Speaker BWhat what we see now, some of our faster moving customers, they again become generalists.
Speaker BThey do they.
Speaker BOkay, yeah, they become generalists.
Speaker BThey really dip their toys in all kind of waters across the whole organization.
Speaker BAnd they usually become.
Speaker BWell, there are some exceptions, but they usually are the AI champions who actually bring certain vision of how AI can be deployed and where in each of specialized areas of commerce.
Speaker BBut it takes a generalist.
Speaker BIt takes a generalist and the courage to actually disrupt and unbox some processes and actually pick one that would be beneficial for automation.
Speaker AWow, interesting.
Speaker AGot it.
Speaker AThat's why I love this job.
Speaker ALike I have one conversation with somebody yesterday and then I bring in the conversation today and it actually ends up hitting right on the money in terms of like a nugget to leave the audience with.
Speaker ASo I'm curious, is that when you, when you look at retailers that you're working with in terms of who's handling this transition well, is that one of the big separating factors?
Speaker AIs it the only separating factor or are there others that are handling it well versus maybe those that are struggling in terms of figuring out how to get on board with an AI transition?
Speaker BWell, I think for us as practitioners there is a big was a big let's will we.
Speaker BWe see it as a range, as an axis.
Speaker BSo we always kind of nudge customer towards the end of the axis where there is a well defined piece of a workflow, measurable, specific, we can Change something in 3, 4, 5, 6 weeks.
Speaker BThe projects like AI, all this AI transformation does not happen or takes years without any tangible results.
Speaker BIs where the ambition is to transform something that lacks granularity at all.
Speaker BOkay, so it's good to have a vision.
Speaker BLet's build an AI AI native organization.
Speaker BWe ourselves have the same vision, but we are transforming one process at a time.
Speaker BFor example, we have calls just like we have with you.
Speaker BWe have a transcript analysis app that helps our business developers, key account managers, to improve, let's say their persuasion or improve the structure of their pitch.
Speaker BIf It's a new customer.
Speaker BSo we can analyze them real time, give them feedback, give them some, let's say coaching.
Speaker BAsk for.
Speaker BYeah, you would improve Next.
Speaker BIt's a small piece, but it's very practical, very tangible.
Speaker BThe same, the same for organizations strategies.
Speaker BIt's great to have a large long term strategy, but where we have seen millions of euros spent or dollars and already years of work accumulated without any practical application.
Speaker BOr there are cases where organizations actually build something.
Speaker BBut it's something.
Speaker BI have a perfect example of few organizations that built it.
Speaker BThey call it let's build corporate brain.
Speaker BThey build it, they sometimes even use some open source LLM, train it, whatever takes GPU effort, time, effort.
Speaker BBut nobody uses it.
Speaker AYeah.
Speaker BBecause it was not part of their workflow.
Speaker BNobody needs really a brain.
Speaker BThey just want some specific thing being done.
Speaker BThey want to understand.
Speaker BOkay, I now address John in this organization.
Speaker BWhat is the tone of voice of John specifically AI.
Speaker BPlease help me to write this speech for John specifically.
Speaker BHe's CIO and we already have like email exchange, hundred emails.
Speaker BSo please pick up how John really approaches the offer, what he rejects, what he likes, how he reasons.
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker BSo something very practical and people even don't want to ask, they want to get it.
Speaker BSo that's the, that's the best.
Speaker BThat's the best candidate for success is when we just give something to people that they use.
Speaker BWe always go from an output.
Speaker BWe don't want a tool like a brain.
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker BWe need output.
Speaker BSo we reverse engineer.
Speaker BSo here is a success.
Speaker BLet's take one step back what happened before.
Speaker BLet's look here.
Speaker BCan we improve it with AI?
Speaker BOkay.
Speaker BIf we can, we can.
Speaker BIf not, then we move further backwards and we find a place where we can generate an output that matters.
Speaker BAnd then organization learns, then organization trusts and then they are on a path to becoming AI.
Speaker BNative organization.
Speaker BIt takes an unusual skill.
Speaker BRight.
Speaker BAs you guys electricity.
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker BNobody knew what to do.
Speaker BAs our favorite example is that some guys in manufacturing, they just change their lamps, right.
Speaker BTo electrical lamps from gas.
Speaker BIt was not even like a candle, it was gas already.
Speaker BSo they changed some other guys did what?
Speaker BThey built machines.
Speaker ARight, Right, Right.
Speaker AYeah.
Speaker AIt's why it goes back to the whole con.
Speaker AThe whole.
Speaker AThe motif we were talking about before too, which is, you know, chances are the general practitioner that understands the wide swath of the applicability of AI is probably going to have a better chance of success with this.
Speaker AI would think inside an organization, if that's your mindset in terms of thinking about you know, how do you apply it?
Speaker AIn what spots and which spots overlap and where can it be used in a new way too?
Speaker BThis skill is still, I think, not very well defined.
Speaker BWhat we see, these are people who challenge things and they can spot normalized pain.
Speaker ARight.
Speaker BBecause otherwise you just improve what you're already doing.
Speaker BLike, it's like sending emails faster.
Speaker BRight?
Speaker BSo, okay, let's.
Speaker BIt's easy.
Speaker BYou already have content.
Speaker BIt's easy.
Speaker BBut look at something that is hard, something that your team has been avoiding.
Speaker BWe have a cheat sheet to help our customers to narrow these processes down.
Speaker BLike something, something that it happened, like that you delegate something and it does not happen.
Speaker BPeople avoid it.
Speaker BFor example, one thing, right?
Speaker BNobody owns it.
Speaker BYeah, nobody owns it.
Speaker BSo these are the blind spot of organizations that are true targets for you that when AI is there.
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker BThen it's.
Speaker BAnother cheat code I can share is that we have built many great solutions that customer did not even consider to be a problem.
Speaker BThey were just complaining about it.
Speaker BSo one way is just to listen what people complain about because they don't think it's fixable.
Speaker BThey just complain.
Speaker BThey think it's just impossible.
Speaker BLet me complain about it over the dinner or a beer.
Speaker BAnd then we tell what if it would be a problem?
Speaker BHow what would be your ask?
Speaker BAnd then there's big resistance.
Speaker BBut if they formulate it, then we usually can formulate a solution.
Speaker AYeah.
Speaker AAnd that's a theme I've heard in multiple conversations this year too.
Speaker AAnd it goes back to what you said in the first, in your answer the first question too, which is like, some work is just too hard to get done by humans.
Speaker AAnd we as organizations don't always have a good understanding of what that work is.
Speaker AAnd probably what the work is that they're complaining or not talking about is a good litmus test for where that, where those opportunities lie.
Speaker AAll right, so let's, let's shift gears a little bit now.
Speaker ASo, you know, we've been talking, we've been talking about, for the most part, you know, the supervised automation concept, but where does this all go next?
Speaker AYou know, how close are we actually to automated commerce?
Speaker ALike, what's your take on that?
Speaker ALike, truly automated commerce, like, is that a reality?
Speaker AIs it someplace we can get to?
Speaker AHow long is it going to take?
Speaker ALet's just have a discussion on that one, Antonio.
Speaker BI think the vision of automated commerce is where let's say order is placed, order is fulfilled, whatever package label is printed, maybe robotic warehouse has taken it packaged, slipped and sent it So I think that's definitely something that we can almost see nowadays, but with a big exception that still there are humans who are supervising the process.
Speaker AYep.
Speaker BEach workflow that is built can be self corrective, self improving and, and people now don't need also BAs or team leads.
Speaker BThey, they can just narrate what they need and a system would build a small application for them.
Speaker BRight.
Speaker BSo if they find some repeatable issue, they can build an application for that, they can build an exception for that.
Speaker BBut still there are humans because either as a system needs to be so perfect and envision what will happen in retail like in two years and it's kind of self adapt and I, I, I don't yet envision such system or there should be still people who are just doing different jobs.
Speaker BSo instead of being between systems or copy pasting or doing as we tell detective work around some shipments and orders and delays, they are overseeing the process, they are judging, let's say AI decision making.
Speaker BAI feels okay, it's a, it is exception.
Speaker BSo this order is flagged because there possibly stop conflict and then suggest some action and then humans can decide okay, we accept it or we override it with something else.
Speaker BBut I see it's a very exciting process where you see work happening.
Speaker BYou don't need to create certain outputs, outputs are being done, but you need to orchestrate it.
Speaker BYou need to, you need to have this creativity to see what's next.
Speaker BBecause one thing is of course find normalized pain and address it.
Speaker BBut another thing is like with this personalization at scale is to imagine something that humanly was not possible before or was possible in a super small family business, in a small village where you know everybody and you serve them well.
Speaker BBut now any brand, even with like hundred millions, half billion consumers can actually ensure the same level of service.
Speaker AOh God.
Speaker AAll right, well, before we let you go, you know, we, you've seen, we've seen a lot of, you know, tech promises come and go over the last, you know, 20 years particularly, or maybe even 30 years if you go back to starter.com.
Speaker AWhat's the biggest lesson you've learned in trying to get retailers to actually trust AI enough to hand over basically its operational layer to it.
Speaker AAs we've just been discussing.
Speaker AWhat's the biggest lesson you've learned along that front?
Speaker BWell, as we tell our customers are very smart people because they run large businesses.
Speaker BSo their trust is one of the battlefield.
Speaker AYeah, right.
Speaker BThey're smart people.
Speaker ATrust their hubris maybe.
Speaker AYeah, right.
Speaker AYeah.
Speaker BThey are not trusting Your slide decks, they are not trusting even your enthusiasm because you can be just blinded by some nice technology.
Speaker BWould it be whatever composable commerce or headless or something there?
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker BThey trust when they see their data, their process and AI recommending or doing the same things that their best employees doing.
Speaker BAnd of course when exceptions happen because decision makers they are involved, it's not when everything is great, they're involved.
Speaker BThey usually involve when things.
Speaker BThen some exceptions occur, some corner cases, exceptions and then they need to intervene to handle them.
Speaker BSo when they see this becomes less than it used to be and they don't need even their mental capacity to address them to help, then they say oh wow.
Speaker BI myself, I replaced my role within the company about one and half year ago in terms of, of say resourcing management.
Speaker AReally?
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker BSo I, it was super simple.
Speaker BI just collected say around half thousand or maybe up to thousand of my decisions on certain situations.
Speaker BI could extract like a decision making metrics and then whenever there was a case, AI would apply all my archive and this decision making my metrics and would explain what Anton's would do and what is a suggestion.
Speaker BSo and then a human would actually decide, but this human would always have Anton by the side.
Speaker BAnd when I saw them I thought my God, this is so much better.
Speaker BBecause I'm sometimes in a rush.
Speaker BWhy forgot about something.
Speaker BBut this guy never forgets.
Speaker BHe never in a rush.
Speaker BHe has so much capacity.
Speaker AHe's got access to your entire brain too.
Speaker ANot the things that you've, you have in your brain but you forgot about.
Speaker AWow, that's.
Speaker AYeah.
Speaker BAnd it's, it's again it's a very small like stratified set of what I'm doing.
Speaker BSo one role, one process at a time.
Speaker BThat's in our opinion is a like a one workflow at a time.
Speaker BThat's a way to autonomous retail.
Speaker AYeah, the, the keywords I would take from what you just said too is like it's going to be the easy, easiest.
Speaker AIt's going to be easiest for the retail leaders to understand what's tangible to them and what they can actually feel in terms of making their life lives easier.
Speaker AAt the end of the day too, that's where you're going to want to focus first.
Speaker AWhich makes sense when you get right down to it.
Speaker AAll right, man.
Speaker AWell that was great man.
Speaker AGod, I could, this, I could talk to you for hours.
Speaker AThis is really, really good, really really great content and it was a really great discussion.
Speaker ASo if people want to get in touch with you Learn more about Scanda Web 2 the Opera Layer.
Speaker AWhat's the best way for them to do that?
Speaker BWell, they can find me on LinkedIn as Anton and Scandi Web, or they can just go to scandiweb.com, fill in the contact form, and they tell that they have seen me with.
Speaker BTalking with Chris on Omni Podcast.
Speaker BSo that's easy.
Speaker BWe are founders.
Speaker BWe are still very much engaged with the business, so would be very glad to continue this conversation with some business.
Speaker BRight.
Speaker AThis is really heady stuff we got into and a lot of.
Speaker AA lot of stuff that's coming to me at the top of my head, too.
Speaker AAnd you answer those questions with, with, with great articulation and a lot of insight in ways that I never have even thought about before.
Speaker AAnd so, and, and, and also kudos to you.
Speaker ANo one's ever said, like, yeah, reach out and tell us.
Speaker ATell them.
Speaker ATell us you heard about us.
Speaker AYou heard about us from your conversation with Chris on the podcast.
Speaker AThat's awesome.
Speaker ASo, yeah.
Speaker AAll right, well, that wraps us up.
Speaker AThanks to Anton.
Speaker AThanks, Anton, for joining us today.
Speaker AThis podcast was produced, of course, with the help of Ella Sirjord, as they always are.
Speaker AAnd on behalf of all of us here at Omnitok Retail, as always, be careful out there.