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Enterprise Successes and Failures — E-commerce AI Under Scrutiny, Oracle Accelerates Event Season, and the AI ​​Productivity Generation Debate Continues

Posted on by darion

Main topic: Artificial Intelligence in e-commerce – are customers and suppliers on the same page?

I can be a real artificial intelligence grumpy budget sometimes nitpicky, but I generally like e-commerce use cases. E-commerce lends itself well to AI’s predictive strengths, without necessarily requiring certainty (personalized recommendations are a good example). And: it’s a safer testing ground for generative AI compared to, say, job seeker assessments or police crime reports. But what does Chris think? He continues his prolific posts on e-commerce AI with AI for E-commerce – How Retailers Are Selling Transformation to Internal and External Teams.

The inner workings of AI in retail are a different story, as Chris highlights the risks of over-employment of AI in the creative sector mush branded content and/or employee morale risk. This quote from Chris is an apt summary for enterprise AI in general:

If (AI) is based on real business needs, not on a tactical need to run a race without a clear idea of ​​why, or on a vague desire to please shareholders in the face of overwhelming information noise.

Which brings us to a quote from Chris Debenham about using AI tools in the cloud:

The ability to test, test, test, and try out not just the AI-driven service versus the non-AI service, but multiple versions and iterations of that service. While we could prove that the AI ​​was better than the non-AI solution, often the first implementation would have marginal benefits, but through testing, optimizing, and improving that, we saw huge benefits. That process of constant experimentation, constant improvement, all built on a foundation of multi-dimensional testing (was critical).

Another great tip comes from Erin Roy, former marketing director at Gordon Ramsay Restaurants:

When it comes to overcoming obstacles, it’s about speaking to your audience in a way that they understand. I’m a marketer, so I’m either a friend or a foe, depending on how the presentation goes. But always communicate the possibilities and the opportunities – first show small examples, then scale. It’s about creating and nurturing a culture where teams can thrive, where they’re really excited about new things and possibilities that they don’t know exist yet. The sky’s the limit. And I think as leaders in this space, our challenge is to create cultures where teams can thrive and fly.

I don’t know about you, but this is the kind of AI environment I’d like to work in – instead of the digital KPI/volume -> performance surveillance climate that companies too easily fall into. But let’s add another dimension to this, via AI for e-commerce – NVIDIA and Google on the changing consumer experience. At a recent e-commerce event, Chris quotes NVIDIA:

Consumers are now at a point where they want to stop being advertised to and they want to see personalized recommendations that really meet their needs. They expect that when they come to your e-commerce site, you know who they are, what their preferences are, and not only what their purchase history is, but what they’re looking at now. What’s their behavior like right now on your e-commerce site? They want to see recommendations throughout the session. And they want offers that are personalized to their needs.

Perhaps – although I don’t think consumers appreciate the overreach of being bombarded with “spray and pray” emails and being added to newsletters they didn’t even know existed… “Sorry to see you go” and all that opt-in nonsense. Chris notes:

In short, fight for buyers’ support rather than treating them as cannon fodder for an ad-fueled war machine. But at this point I’d venture a different piece of advice: sometimes step back and give your customers some breathing room.

Yes — and finding the right balance between personalization and dynamism will go a long way toward determining the winners (or losers) in e-commerce.

Diginomica’s Choice – my best stories on diginomica this week

Supplier analysis, Diginomica style. Here are my top three picks from our suppliers:

  • Zoho Analytics Demonstrates Its Business Intelligence Strength Through AI – Alyx Digests Major Analytics Update – With Proof Points for Customers Including:Some of the new features are really, really good. I recently showed the team things like race charts, sun charts, heat maps, and some experimental forecasts.” Yes, that’s exactly how I want customers to say about my new release…
  • Certinia Launches CS Cloud to Help Service Organizations Manage Customer Success – Phil on the Long-Awaited GA. Transforming customer success into cloud functionality is the right trend, otherwise it’s just happy talk. Phil is right: “Until now, most organizations have tracked these key processes and metrics in separate documents and spreadsheets, ad hoc message threads, and one-time reports.”
  • Dreamforce 24 – CEO Marc Benioff sets ambitious goals to expose Salesforce customers to AI the way it was “intended to be” – Stuart is preparing comprehensive coverage of next week’s event, including Dreamforce, Hubspot Inbound, and Workday Rising. I myself continue my Las Vegas residency for Rising…

Oracle CloudWorld and SuiteWorld – the most important information about Diginomica. In a commendable effort to improve the health and well-being of media/analysts worldwide, Oracle has decided to hold both of its events in the same week – but at different hotels in Las Vegas. Did the diginomica team make the moves? Absolutely, and more – all for our readers, you know that by now. I can’t review all the show coverage here, but you can check out our full Here you will find CloudWorld/SuiteWorld coverage (We’ll probably add a few more in the coming week.) For now, here are my top picks from our field crew. Brian Sommer also has a recap; if you want to hear his first take, you can check out our CloudWorld and SuiteWorld Podcast Review.

The best of the corporate web

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My Top Five – The AI ​​Productivity Debate Continues

Last week I took a half-stance on gen AI and productivity—but that’s not all. This week, Joe McKendrick published The data suggests gen AI increases software productivity . Now McKendrick is focusing on developer productivity, and I agree: gen AI excels at code syntax. Two big caveats: a lot of what the most profitable developers do is not just code, but all the problem-solving, business aspects of modern development—a topic McKendrick has covered before. And then there’s this:

Importantly, less experienced developers showed higher rates of AI adoption and greater productivity gains. “Copilot significantly increases the number of tasks performed by recent and junior hires, but not by more senior and senior developers,” the researchers noted.

How today’s “younger” AI-dependent gen becomes “seniors” is an interesting question. Point us in the direction – AI gen productivity is never as certain as press releases say. McKinsey touches on another thread in that technology alone is not enough for true productivity – “amazing technology is never enough.”

Gusts

As a Canva user, I have a front row seat to this event:

I’ll try to be open-minded, but I wonder if my wallet will be as cooperative.

This week’s headline was a tight one. I have “Rare Stinky Penguin Wins New Zealand Bird of the Year” and Historic Newspaper Uses Janky AI Newscasters Instead of Human Journalists (I Had to Look Up Janky). But here’s my winner:

See you next time… If you find #ensw a song that qualifies as a hit or a miss – in a good or bad way – let me know in the comments how Clive (almost) always does this. Most of the articles about Enterprise’s successes and failures were culled from my carefully selected @jonerpnewsfeed.