The Transformative Role of Artificial Intelligence at The Very Group

Wondering how one of the UK's leading tech-driven retailers is using AI? Well, you're in for a treat! In this blog, Michelle Williams, Data Product Owner at The Very Group, which operates Very, takes us behind the scenes. 

From discussing her journey into tech and her current role as a bridge between data teams, internal stakeholders and customers, to shedding light on how AI is being responsibly adopted and implemented at The Very Group, she takes us through it all. Dive right in!

Meet Michelle Williams, Data Product Owner at The Very Group

Tell us a bit more about yourself/your journey into tech and how you ended up in your current role at The Very Group.

My job as Data Product Owner is to ensure the development and success of data products within The Very group, I am a a bridge between our data teams—data science, data analytics, and data engineering—and our internal stakeholders and customers. Often, it’s about making complex ideas more understandable. But it goes the other way too—I take high-level requirements from across the business and translate them into something our tech teams can work with to deliver what's needed.

In terms of what data products I'm responsible for, it spans from data models created by our data science team all the way to our data platforms, like, our data lakehouse. It's a diverse and engaging role that keeps me on my toes!

Now, if you're wondering how I got here, it all started 22 years ago. I’ve been at The Very Group that whole time and had more career opportunities here than I could ever have imagined. I began my journey as a Data Analyst and, over the years, I've worked across lots of different data functions. This exposure to different facets of data work equipped me with the understanding and knowledge to take on my current role as a translator between various teams.

How has your role evolved over the past 22 years at The Very Group and how has the company supported your career growth and development?

I joined The Very Group as a graduate and started as a data analyst in the retail function. My role has changed quite a bit over time, not so much in terms of the work I do, but more in the areas I work in. I've been in retail, marketing, logistics, and digital, always within the sphere of data analytics and AI, which means I’ve constantly been learning new things.

One thing I've been really grateful for is the support from my managers and leaders. They've always encouraged me to grow and learn, and were never hesitant about me moving to a new team if that's what was best for my development. The Very Group has a great culture of learning and growth.

There's also a fantastic talent development team here, who have supported me with accessing numerous leadership courses. Plus, everyone who works at The Very Group has 24/7 access to more than 5,000 online courses via Udemy Business. That includes some great courses for anyone wanting to enhance their knowledge of machine learning and AI.

What is The Very Group's strategy for adopting AI and how are you ensuring it is done in a responsible and considered way?

AI has been around for a while now. It's been part of the data world for over 20 years. But in the last 18 months or so, AI has really taken off. It's everywhere. 

A lot of companies are rushing to adopt AI, just for the sake of having it, but we want to make decisions in a more considered way. And we've already been using AI in our business for things like stock forecasting, on-site search and credit decisioning. 

So, as the adoption of AI has become more widespread, we’ve asked ourselves, “What are the specific use cases for AI in our business? How can it best serve our customers and our people?" And we’ve focused on implementing AI initiatives that would add the greatest value. For us, it’s about making sure we are investing our resources wisely, and giving our customers and our colleagues what they actually need.

How is AI currently being used to improve customer and colleague experiences at The Very Group? What are some examples?

For our colleagues, we have created Very GPT, a safe and secure generative AI chatbot. You know how useful these type of tools can be, right? But, we've all heard those scary stories about data leaks. So, we came up with our own user interface on top of an existing product such as OpenAI or Microsoft Azure to make sure it's secure. To make sure we’re all using it effectively and responsibly, our talent team created a new e-learning module on AI that everyone has to complete before accessing Very GPT.

On the customer side, AI offers some great opportunities to transform ways of working for our people, which will ultimately create value for our customers. One example is AI-generated product descriptions, which we implemented recently. For our relatively small team of copywriters, creating descriptions for the 120,000 different products we launch on-site every year was a huge undertaking. So, we introduced a generative AI tool that assists in writing these product descriptions. The tool uses Amazon AWS to write descriptions based on the product image. Since it's gone live, the time to write a product description has been cut from about 30 minutes to just 6. So our customers see great product descriptions much faster. For our colleagues, it boosted efficiency, and given them more time to create value elsewhere, like writing influencer blogs. 

How is AI being applied to challenges like retail forecasting, promotion and pricing optimization? What benefits has this brought?

In retail, it's super important for us to have the right products at the right price, and with great availability. We've been using AI, especially machine learning and predictive modeling, to help us with this. Imagine being able to predict how much stock we should initially purchase and when we should fill that stock. We don't want to either sell out or end up with too much stock, so AI can really help us get this balance right.

On the pricing and promotions side of things, is not just about setting the right price at the sale point, but also throughout the product's lifecycle. We want to maximize the value of each product and ensure we have the right promotions at the right time. Our machine learning models are predicting these outcomes and helping us make decisions faster.

What initiatives like the AI incubator and pioneers is The Very Group taking to develop AI in a collaborative way?

Our data and tech teams were really eager to start exploring AI, but we realised colleagues from lots of different areas of the business were interested in getting involved, too. So, we set up the AI guild, which is a group of people from all across the business. We have teammates from data, tech, legal, risk and compliance, customer care, marketing, and many other functions. Our aim was to ensure we were all working towards the same goals and not duplicating our efforts. 

We also wanted to consider the legal and security aspects, since AI was new territory for us. The AI guild meets every two weeks to discuss all the AI-related projects everyone's working on, and to provide guidance. 

We then set up two small teams: the AI pioneers and the AI incubator. These are small, nimble teams that explore different ideas and proof of concepts for how we can use AI. We didn't want to make any big investments upfront. We just wanted a small team to explore the potential and viability of different ideas. These teams are really about ideation and testing out concepts. We know there are tons of ways we can use AI, but we want to make sure we're getting the best value from our efforts.

Want to join The Very Group?

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