In May, technology retailer Currys announced it had selected Microsoft and Accenture to help it develop core cloud technology infrastructure aimed at supporting artificial intelligence (AI)-powered initiatives across its business.
It is an agreement the retailer believes will bring multiple benefits to the organisation, which through its market-leading position in the UK and Nordics consumer electronics sector feels it can be “the home of AI” and a leading player in society’s evolution to becoming powered by generative AI (GenAI).
Through the Accenture and Microsoft deal, which leverages the two businesses’ joint venture, Avanade, Currys wants to modernise, secure and simplify its IT systems, and create a route to deploying Microsoft AI technologies such as Azure OpenAI Service.
The plan is to use the latest AI technologies to enhance operations, improve the shopping experience for consumers, and make Currys a better place to work for its more than 30,000-strong retail workforce.
CIO Andy Gamble acknowledges that artificial intelligence has been used at Currys for years, in forecasting and replenishment, product pricing, and to understand more about its customers. But what is new and fuelling excitement at Currys is the generative strand of it.
“How quickly you can get access to a larger array of information and how accessible it is through prompt-based conversational interfaces – that’s where a lot of our excitement is coming from,” says Gamble.
While many technological fads have been and gone, or never quite found their role in retail, GenAI is perceived to be different.
“There has been excitement about many things over the years, but I think AI is different – more specifically GenAI,” says the CIO.
“It’s a way of making technology much more accessible, which is one reason it’s not just a flash in the pan. Lots of pundits think the same, most notably Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who describes AI as a really big ‘game-changer’ and equally as revolutionary as the personal computer.”
Gamble is a self-proclaimed “optimist” in terms of the potential widespread impact of AI.
Four pillars
According to the CIO, there are four pillars to Currys’ AI strategy, which provide support for how the company talks about and explores the potential use cases of GenAI internally.
Currys started “intentionally broad”, he says, when assessing what role GenAI could play within the retailer – from looking at opportunities in the pre-sales and sales process through to post-sale. This “broad scoping exercise” was designed to help Currys understand where it can unlock value quicker aligned to existing strategy.
It was important, he says, to understand if GenAI can help find better ways of obtaining the value we’re seeking and unlock existing plans faster.
“We’re not seeing it as a magical bolt-on solution that is the answer to everything,” he acknowledges.
“We have a steering committee on the topic of AI – it’s broad and cross-functional. We’ve also set up a centre of excellence in terms of how we’re using AI across the company, so we can make sure there’s clear guidance to our teams”
Andy Gamble, Currys
As Currys has matured on its AI journey, it has identified colleague productivity as the first pillar of potential value. For example, the business is embracing how store staff can be “even better” than they are now by using Microsoft Copilot, a chatbot built on large language modelling that serves up relevant information when prompted with questions.
“It’s about accessing information and getting faster access to what they need every day and understanding how AI tools can improve performance in the corporate team and across stores by finding the right information as quickly as possible to help customers,” says Gamble.
The CIO says a key opportunity attached to AI’s emergence is “letting the colleague be the best version of themselves on that day a customer stops into store to ask a complicated question”. And that, he believes, can be achieved by deploying the technology to make all the processes behind the scenes much more readily available.
Following the initial scoping exercise, some priority use cases have been identified. In an interview with Computer Weekly last December, Currys’ chief data officer Susie Moan explained how several GenAI-enabled proofs of concept had been implemented, namely around helping the organisation understand what was prompting consumer returns.
“These are all progressing, and are evolving into larger initiatives,” says Gamble, who is keen to keep the projects close to his chest until there are clear results to talk about.
“We’ve got some value from GenAI-enabled sentiment analysis and being clearer on the quality of services delivered across the cross-section of stores and our services teams – it’s enabling us with the action where improvements need to be made.”
Another pillar of focus for Currys is using GenAI to help its customers self-serve and diagnose problems with technology before items without an underlying fault are sent to the retailer for repair or return. The aim here is to avoid unnecessary customer and operational pain – preventing the frustration of “the dreaded ‘no fault found’ messaging” that can waste time for both the retailer and the consumer, Gamble explains.
The other pillars, respectively, involve exploring potential future uses of GenAI that may not drive value today but might in the future, as well as Currys’ role in selling AI-enabled products.
“We want to build the muscle inside our organisation that enables us to responsibly look at how AI can drive value, while learning as we go with a test and learn mindset to avoid common pitfalls such as hallucinations founded in data,” Gamble says of pillar three.
And on the subject of products sold in its 700-plus shops and online, he adds: “We are a tech retailer – ultimately we have an active role in people’s understanding of the technology.
“AI is being added into our products on a day-to-day basis, so we have an important role in the eyes of our customers in helping them understand it.”
For example, Currys worked closely with Microsoft to distribute Microsoft Copilot-enabled laptops in the UK and has exclusivity on almost half of the 24 Copilot-enabled laptops on the market.
“We are looking at how we can be the home of AI and make sure people come to us when they are seeking a better understanding of getting value from AI themselves.”
Applying AI responsibly
We previously reported how fashion retailer AllSaints set up a committee to monitor emerging AI trends and oversee internal deployment of AI.
SJ Grabiec, head of customer experience and payments at the fashion retailer, said at The Delivery Conference in February: “AI is happening – it’s here and it’s now.
“If you’re not thinking about it or considering how to work in harmony with it, that’s a risk in itself. It seems boundless. I’m so fascinated by AI, but I can understand why people see it as terrifying too.”
It is partly why an internal AI committee was established at AllSaints – and this approach is mirrored at Currys.
“We need to apply AI responsibly and there’s a lot of conversation around guardrails and surfacing the right information in the right way, and I’m a subscriber to that. As the prominent tech retailer, we have to stay on the responsible side of using it – it’s vital,” says Gamble.
“We have a steering committee on the topic of AI – it’s broad and cross-functional. We’ve also set up a centre of excellence in terms of how we’re using AI across the company, so we can make sure there’s clear guidance to our teams.”
Gamble continues: “We don’t want to inhibit but we do want to make sure where it is appropriate for use. Ultimately, that’s how we will be successful – not locking it down to just a few individuals, but making sure there’s a group of people making sure we’re applying it responsibly, safely and securely.”
The question of sustainability
The IT modernisation aspect of Currys’ Microsoft-Accenture contract involves migrating nine existing datacentres with more than 2,000 servers and 200 applications onto Azure.
This is seen as a way of creating a more energy-efficient infrastructure, which the retailer argues will help it achieve its net-zero emissions target by 2040.
But as highlighted by a recent announcement from Google, the migration to modern computer power is not a panacea for reducing the carbon footprint of organisations. Indeed, Google said its greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) were up by 13% year on year in 2023 due, in part, to the increase in datacentre energy consumption and growing demand for compute-intensive AI services.
The disclosure was made in the internet search company’s 86-page 2024 Environmental report, published in July.
Microsoft published its 2024 Environmental sustainability report in May, revealing GHG emissions for 2023 were 29.1% higher than its 2020 baseline – despite pledging to become a carbon-negative entity by 2030. Its global datacentre expansion is a contributing factor to this larger footprint.
Gamble does not pretend to have all the answers to the sustainability dilemma that sits alongside growth in compute power – it is an emerging area of focus for the business world, after all – but he acknowledges it features highly in Currys’ thinking around IT investment.
“We’ve announced a big migration from physical server to cloud operating which is helping us carbon footprint-wise – that’s a big step for us in terms of reducing our energy usage and using infrastructure more effectively,” he says.
“But AI and analysis on large datasets, as Google rightly called out, is pretty power hungry so we’re thinking carefully about it. We’re tailoring our models to focus on targeted datasets. Instead of asking really broad-based questions, which is typically where you see footprints start to increase, we’re trying to be more specific.”
Currys is intentionally trying to understand how it can minimise the sustainability impact with any of the AI work it is doing, Gamble assures.
There is more to come from Currys, he adds, in terms of how GenAI can be used to support its burgeoning tech repair operations that are run out of its GXO-operated repair centre in Newark in the East Midlands and which are a key part of the retailer’s efforts to encourage and engage in more circular economy pursuits.
Big tech leap
The group CEO of Currys, Alex Baldock, calls AI “the biggest technological leap of our lifetime” and predicts “big benefits” for staff, consumers and the retailer’s shareholders alike from the use of it at his business.
Indeed, Currys intends to use AI to develop a better long-term understanding of customers and improve the post-sales experience and warranty services.
AI is being added into our products on a day-to-day basis, so we have an important role in the eyes of our customers in helping them understand it Andy Gamble, Currys
Gamble doesn’t name them himself, but there have been retail tech fads across the industry – for example, virtual reality headsets for customers to use in stores, magic mirrors in changing rooms and fixed touchscreen kiosks in the aisles of shops – that simply have not gained the traction the hyperbole surrounding their arrival promised.
With GenAI’s emergence, there is a feeling consumers are already using it themselves in their everyday lives – via ChatGPT and mobile map apps, for example – and that arguably gives retailers a licence to introduce it in customer-facing interactions. And, as Gamble says, lots of new tech coming to market is AI-enabled, with Currys predicting the 2024 peak trading period will involve noteworthy sales growth of such items.
“People are becoming much more comfortable with the tech,” he adds. “GenAI is here to stay and it’s a build on top of the way people naturally engage in their everyday lives.”
From a Currys perspective, Gamble is adamant AI deployment needs to be intentional. Looking at where it adds value can solve existing problems and accelerate the company’s existing plans, which is the approach Gamble and his team are taking.
“It’s about being intentional and focused on specific use cases, which we’re not breaking cover on just yet, and then looking at how we can establish ourselves as the home of AI through the prominent role we play in tech overall in the UK.”
Julie Sweet, chair and CEO of Accenture, says her company, along with Microsoft, can help Currys “raise the bar in the retail industry, reach new frontiers of performance and efficiency, and create new value and growth”.
A strong digital core is needed to optimise the potential of AI and GenAI, and the whole strategy around this emerging tech strand will involve assessing the market for further partner support. Gamble is open to that idea.
“We chose Microsoft and Accenture as they are leaders in their field and they are already strong partners and already doing awesome stuff,” he explains.
“That doesn’t preclude us from maintaining the ability to seek input from others and that’s certainly something I’m a big subscriber to. The tech world is moving at pace, there are a lot of opinions out there, and to make sure Currys is a winner, the support required could come from existing agreements or it could come from elsewhere.”
Gamble says the industry can expect further announcements from Currys on how it is using GenAI to power different parts of the organisation.
