Learning Library

← Back to Library

Intelligent Retail Orchestration with IBM Cloud Pak

Key Points

  • Retailers must simultaneously manage digital and physical store operations—inventory, fulfillment, customer service, risk, and maintenance—to meet rising customer expectations, competition, and cost pressures.
  • IBM Cloud Pak for Data provides a unified, hybrid‑cloud platform that integrates existing ERP, commerce, and data systems, enabling real‑time event streaming and automated, intelligent workflows across the retail ecosystem.
  • In an “buy online, pick up in store” scenario, Watson Assistant and the platform coordinate order amendments, store associate notifications, and customer communications, dynamically prioritizing tasks and giving staff a single click‑away view of all required actions.
  • The solution leverages Watson Knowledge Catalog to normalize data with open‑industry schemas, feeds it into Watson Studio and Watson Machine Learning for explainable AI models, and surfaces the resulting priority events to store teams for continuous operational improvement.

Full Transcript

# Intelligent Retail Orchestration with IBM Cloud Pak **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfDH2iTConI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfDH2iTConI) **Duration:** 00:05:58 ## Summary - Retailers must simultaneously manage digital and physical store operations—inventory, fulfillment, customer service, risk, and maintenance—to meet rising customer expectations, competition, and cost pressures. - IBM Cloud Pak for Data provides a unified, hybrid‑cloud platform that integrates existing ERP, commerce, and data systems, enabling real‑time event streaming and automated, intelligent workflows across the retail ecosystem. - In an “buy online, pick up in store” scenario, Watson Assistant and the platform coordinate order amendments, store associate notifications, and customer communications, dynamically prioritizing tasks and giving staff a single click‑away view of all required actions. - The solution leverages Watson Knowledge Catalog to normalize data with open‑industry schemas, feeds it into Watson Studio and Watson Machine Learning for explainable AI models, and surfaces the resulting priority events to store teams for continuous operational improvement. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfDH2iTConI&t=0s) **Unified Hybrid Cloud for Modern Retail** - The segment outlines how IBM Cloud Pak for Data leverages hybrid‑cloud, AI, and integration services to seamlessly coordinate online orders, in‑store fulfillment, and real‑time operations across thousands of stores and millions of customers. ## Full Transcript
0:00retail today is undergoing significant 0:03transformation driven by increased 0:05customer expectations competition and 0:08cost inflation 0:09to compete retailers need to manage 0:12operations across every channel digital 0:15and physical in particular the store 0:17which today must balance customer 0:19service inventory management e-commerce 0:22order fulfillment transactions risk and 0:25loss preventions maintenance and much 0:28more 0:29hi i'm oksana deporte a cloud pack 0:32platform product manager 0:34with ibm cloud packs with brought 0:36together a series of hybrid cloud 0:39technologies for integration data and ai 0:42in a unified platform that seamlessly 0:44orchestrates the dynamics of the modern 0:47retailer enabling better experiences for 0:50customers and similar ways of working 0:54let's consider a typical retailer with 0:56hundreds of stores thousands of store 0:59associates tens of thousands of products 1:01and millions of customers 1:04each day in real time deliveries are 1:07made shelves are filled stock is managed 1:10e-commerce order fulfilled and customers 1:13are served 1:15many of the typical daily processes are 1:17planned or scheduled however others are 1:20dynamic and require action in real time 1:23let's take a closer look at what happens 1:26when a customer goes to a retailer's 1:28website and chooses to buy online and 1:31pick up in store 1:33while this is captured on the digital 1:35channel it now creates a new activity 1:38for the store to manage 1:41here the customer uses watson assistant 1:44in ibm cloud pack for data to amend 1:47their order 1:52in parallel the store associate is 1:55notified of the in-store pickup 1:57and how this fits in with other store 2:00activities 2:02when the customer arrives she confirms 2:05pickup and the store associate is 2:07advised of her arrival 2:14at every stage the system automatically 2:17coordinates and prioritizes activities 2:20for the store associate who is just a 2:23click away from the applications he 2:25needs to complete the activity 2:27and the customer is immediately informed 2:30when her items are ready for collection 2:33store teams can see what is being 2:36managed in real time 2:38allowing them to continuously identify 2:40opportunities for improvement 2:44let's look at what's enabling this 2:46intelligent retail 2:48orchestration first there is the 2:51retailer's existing environment 2:53containing many of their competitive 2:55differentiators like erp 2:58commerce systems or data 3:00none of this changes 3:02ibm cloud pack for integration enables 3:05the flow of information from multiple 3:07systems for a unified platform 3:09capability 3:12here we are capturing events securely in 3:14real time through event streaming 3:16capability driving fully automated 3:19intelligent workflows across the retail 3:22operation 3:24now we see ibm cloudback for data 3:28triggering the relevant ai models to 3:30optimize operations and experiences 3:34but this is not a black box 3:36all of the ai driven orchestration is 3:39visible and explainable 3:42here we see the models creating priority 3:45events 3:47behind the scenes watson knowledge 3:50catalog normalizes data using an open 3:53standards industry schema which 3:55facilitates the building and training of 3:57ai models using watson studio 4:01watson machine learning 4:02decision optimization and data 4:05virtualization connecting to all 4:08operational master and external data 4:12ibm cloudback for data makes the 4:15development and deployment of models 4:17easy 4:18ensuring they perform efficiently right 4:21task right associate right time 4:24for the best customer 4:26experience 4:28watson open scale tracks and measures 4:31outcomes from ai models to ensure they 4:33remain fair explainable and compliant 4:37detecting and correcting model drift 4:40while the model is in production 4:44now the customer can easily amend her 4:47order using watson assistant 4:50automatically creating new activities 4:52for the store through integration with 4:54critical systems giving the customer a 4:57seamless experience 5:00because all of this runs on red hat 5:02openshift it can be deployed anywhere on 5:05any cloud or on premises with a common 5:08interface for devops and administration 5:12as you've seen we've used ibm cloud 5:15packs to enable a configurable unified 5:18platform to orchestrate retail 5:20operations 5:21so instead of relying on shared 5:23documentation to establish standards 5:26retailers can now codify their retail 5:29operating model 5:31ensuring every store is orchestrated to 5:34the same high standards 5:36both in performance and experience 5:40thank you for watching if you have any 5:42questions please drop us a line below if 5:45you want to see more videos like this in 5:47the future please like and subscribe and 5:50don't forget if you want to learn more 5:53about ibm cloud packs please check out 5:55the links below