Making Retail Operations Smarter: How to Identify the Right Use Cases for Agentic AI
Over the past year, retail operations across the globe have adapted to AI technologies in a big way and reshaped operations like never before. In fact, it would not be an overstatement to say that the sector is at the forefront of AI innovation. Today, discussions have moved beyond standard generative AI models and are becoming more concentrated on agentic AI.
However, retail businesses often find it a bit difficult to identify the right use cases for agentic AI in retail. Over the past few years, Evolvous has worked with several retailers from across the globe, and this has been a major challenge that we have seen most of them face. In this article, we will try to give you some pointers, which will help you discover more the correct use cases that warrants agentic AI approach and how you can get the right value from the article.
What is Agentic AI?
So, what exactly is Agentic AI? In simple terms, it refers to AI systems that can take autonomous actions to achieve user-defined goals. Compared to generative models like ChatGPT, which only answer questions and generate content, agentic AI can proactively plan, make decisions, and even execute tasks based on context, preferences, and evolving scenarios.
Within the Microsoft ecosystem, agentic AI is embedded in tools like Microsoft Copilot, Power BI, Power Apps and Dynamics 365.
Learn More About Microsoft Copilot Studio
Discover how Evolvous can help you develop your own AI agent for your retail operations with Microsoft Copilot Studio consulting.
Unlock the Power of AI with Copilot Studio
The Impact of Agentic AI in Retail Industry
Let us now look at some of the impact of AI in retail industry. Here are some of the ways in which you can leverage the agentic AI capabilities for retail businesses:
Personalized Customer Experiences
Crafting customer experiences based on the needs of the clients is a highly effective sales strategy. Here are some of the ways in which agentic AI can help in retail sector:
- Make automatic proactive recommendations based on customer behavior.
- Respond to customer service queries across different channels
- Create discounts and promotions based on buying trends and customer value.
Better Inventory and Supply Chain Management
Getting the attention from customers is not the only thing you need to do to ensure success. Optimally managing the inventory and supply chain is another essential task. Here’s how agentic AI can help you with that:
- Agents can track stock levels, forecast demand, and trigger reorders.
- Optimize the stock placement based on real-time sales flow.
- They can also collaborate between different ERP modules.
- It can also reroute shipments in case of disruptions
Streamline Operations and Production
Agentic AI can also play a critical role in determining your capabilities in capitalizing on the opportunities.
- You can use it to monitor store performance, staffing and customer traffic in physical and online stores.
- It can suggest methods to automate back-office tasks like pricing updates, inventory updates and compliance checks.
Business and Technical Criteria to Consider
Based on our experience working with retail companies across the globe, we have found to ensure success in accurately determining the use cases for agentic AI in retail, there are a few key factors that you should consider.
Now, these are not what you call “hard and fast” criteria that must be adhered to in every case. They are more like guidelines. In most cases, we will assess your existing system and processes to help you determine the use cases:
The Volume of Interactions:
It is recommended to choose a process with high volumes or number of interactions. For example, an FMCG company receives many more orders than an automobile manufacturer. Therefore, it is more appropriate to apply agentic AI to an order intake process in a consumer goods company.
The Level of Interaction with Different Systems
Try to choose a process that interacts with multiple systems. Processes where users must review or consolidate data from multiple systems are great for the application of agentic AI. Sometimes referred to as “swivel-chair integration,” these processes are time-consuming and are often prone to errors. These challenges can easily be solved with the power of AI.
The Requirement of Human Intervention
If it is a process where a high level of human interaction is required, then that makes it a good candidate for agentic AI in retail. For example, there are several processes in the retail sector that involve seeking, reading, considering, and reasoning over multiple pieces of information, documents, or systems. These kinds of tasks usually require a lot of human intervention. There are better, more productive tasks on which you can focus your human resources.
Agentic AI can assess and highlight gaps, differences, or anomalies. It can make recommendations to be evaluated by a human and as such, is designed to work alongside or augment the human by reducing the amount of mundane, repetitive activity.
However, this doesn’t mean that you leave out the human element out. It remains critical. AI just takes care of the mundane work so that your team can focus on the exceptions, strategic analysis, and complex decisions while supporting innovation.
How to Determine Value of Implementing Agentic AI in Retail?
You need to be able to determine the realistic value that you are deriving after implementing AI agents in retail. When it comes to evaluating the business value of any technology investment, one of the first points to consider is determining the specific drivers of value.
When we work on projects where we need to develop AI agents for retail, the value driven by the solution usually falls into three areas:
Productivity Boost
Productivity is measured by the time you effectively save for your human employees by implementing AI agents. For example, one retailer might want to free up time for their supply chain planning team to spend more time with individual suppliers, planning future promotional inventories. AI agents can help to boost productivity by streamlining communications with suppliers, monitoring contract compliance, and resolving disputes efficiently.
Enhanced Process Efficiency
With custom built AI agents, you can automate repetitive tasks and optimize operations, leading to higher process efficiency levels and lower costs. Such processes can also reduce the time spent between receiving and processing a customer order which translates to improved customer responsiveness.
Increased Service Quality
AI agents can also help you deliver an enhanced quality of service. How does it do that? For example, it can give you real time inventory status update at your fingertips, so that you don’t promise inventory that does not exist, as that will adversely impact customer satisfaction scores and may well result in future lost sales.
How Does Evolvous Help
Evolvous offers end-to-end solutions for AI agent development. A critical aspect of our solution is helping you determine the use case of AI for your business. Our extensive experience of working with the retail sector helps us to understand your business and unique needs and then develop the ideal use case for agentic AI for your business.
Identify the Right Use Case for AI Agents in Retail
We simplify the task for identifying use cases for agentic AI in retail, without compromising on efficiency. Get in touch with us today and get the support you need
