Major Australian And New Zealand Retailers And Consumer Goods Brands Turning To Snowflake To Accelerate AI

As consumers increasingly expect greater personalisation and digital-first experiences, major retailers and consumer goods brands across Australia and New Zealand are turning to Snowflake to deliver on these expectations.

Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud helps retailers unlock value from their fragmented data, increasing personalisation, improving supply chain operations, and optimising pricing strategies. Key to achieving these benefits is democratising data, enabling more people across a retailer’s business to access the insights they need to solve critical business problems.

Further, once a robust data strategy has been built on Snowflake, this sets a foundation for future AI and machine learning projects.

Theo Hourmouzis, Senior Vice President ANZ and ASEAN, Snowflake said there had been a surge among Australia’s retail leaders and consumer goods brands turning to Snowflake to deliver on AI and data ambitions.

“Retailers are looking to break down data silos, democratise data, and unlock the value of their data as consumers increasingly go ‘digital-first’ when engaging with brands,” Hourmouzis said. “Further, local retailers see the potential of AI to provide better customer service as consumer expectations around the online experience increase dramatically. AI is fundamentally transforming how retailers operate and we’re helping some of Australia’s best-known brands to accelerate this transformation.”

Major retail and consumer goods brands including David Jones, Workwear Group, MECCA, and Mitre 10 NZ have implemented Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud to unlock the power of their data and implement AI use cases. These include delivering personalised shopping experiences, optimising pricing strategies, and improving supply chain operations.

Hugh Fahy, CTO, David Jones said AI was increasingly at the heart of delivering exceptional customer experiences, but doing so required a data strategy built on governance, security, and accessibility.

“In a sector as competitive as retail, only the best customer experience will do,” Fahy said. “Delivering this experience requires making well governed, democratised data available throughout the business. Our relationship with Snowflake has greatly accelerated unlocking this value and enabled us to implement AI use cases across the organisation.”

George Prieto, AI and Automation Lead, at Workwear Group said Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud had helped the business reduce costs by 30 percent, save 100 days of labour per month, and lay the foundations for AI.

“In the last twelve months, we've been exploring generative AI here at the Workwear Group,” he said. “Snowflake's a huge enabler of our AI journey. Over the last few years we’ve built really well governed and secured data so we're now able to leverage that and build out AI across a lot of our business processes.”

Damien Ballesty appointed new Head of Retail and CPG for the region

To help support Snowflake’s momentum in the retail sector, it has appointed Damien Ballesty to the newly created role of Head of Retail and CPG supporting the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region. He brings strong retail sector experience having previously been CIO at Chemist Warehouse, General Manager - Technology at Officeworks, Group IT Director for the Selfridges Department Store group, and Head of Technology for Flybuys and for Coles Data and Marketing teams. Ballesty will be based in Melbourne and will work to support Australia’s major retailers as they further develop their data and AI strategies.

"Retailers and consumer goods companies in our region are at varying stages of their data and AI journey, but all recognise the need for a solid data foundation," Ballesty said. "My focus will be on helping them overcome common challenges – from addressing skills gaps and data silos to governing data and keeping it secure – so they can deliver on key benefits. Whether this be improving revenue through enhanced customer experiences; reducing cost through team member productivity or data collaboration; working capital improvements along the supply chain through AI to better forecast and optimise inventory; or reducing risk by better governance and controls on sensitive data."

About Snowflake

Snowflake makes enterprise AI easy, efficient and trusted. Thousands of companies around the globe, including hundreds of the world’s largest, use Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud to share data, build applications, and power their business with AI. The era of enterprise AI is here. Learn more at snowflake.com (NYSE: SNOW).

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