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Digitalization, AI and training: a permanent revolution

• DIGITAL
• ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

It is a bit like racing forward at full speed on the fast track of technology and digitalization, a process that seems not to see an end inside Teddy, among amazing results achieved and new goals set, as new scenarios keep being opened in what it actually is a permanent revolution. Andrea Arcangeli, the head manager of the corporate Digital Department, who is a witness and among those who are playing an active role in all this over the past years, together with a large group of colleagues and collaborators, speaks about a path that required and still requires a constant change of mindset. “The digital age created something completely new in the trade business, as it introduced new selling models and required the acquisition of new professional resources. From our point of view, it has been a driver for our competitive advantage and optimization as well as it is taking some hard work that requires constant efforts in order to stay updated in an ever-changing technological context”.

Creating value and improving customer experience through digitalization is a path that was developed over several stages and today entered its full maturity, even though new roads and developments are already in sight. In the beginning, the technological upgrade focused on proprietary channels, websites and apps, which required the e-commerce teams of each brand to go through a process of growth and training in order to best optimize the new tools and achieve important performances. Then, in 2023, an important step forward was made when the brands entered the first marketplaces. “We tested the potential of third-party platforms, using our logistics network in some countries and the one of the marketplaces in others. Results were amazing, so we speeded up as much as possible the learning curve, introducing new professional figures in our teams, both the operating and sales ones. The new challenge will be to review our technological architecture as to open new sales channels faster and directly manage some “tools”.

In departments like Marketing and Communication, digital tools certainly are as much strategical as never before as a means to meet and build a relation with customers; but actually, from supply chain to administration, from the law department to IT, the entire Teddy ecosystem is involved in such a change with the aim of making digital culture a shared heritage and turn Teddy into a “Digitail”, a company where digital tools permeate any field, providing an added value and a new way of working. A global change management, therefore, which finds a significant driver to growth in the collaboration with prestigious partners such as the Observatory of Politecnico di Milano as well as in the participation to several events such as the Netcomm Forum in Milan and the Shoptalk in Barcelona. “[Those are] Key appointments for our training, to keep on looking at the future with curiosity and communicate to our collaborators a vision that allows us to set up brand strategies according to an increasingly more omni-channel approach”.

Future is unpredictable by definition but for Teddy and all other retail businesses it will be marked by change and innovation. The journey towards digitalization has reached maturity levels and the emerging predictive and generative AIs laid the grounds for a new historic change that will further revolutionize the way of working and do business in any industry and area of companies. “Besides the development of new platforms dedicated to e-commerce and the integration with new marketplaces, we are carefully working on product recommendation, in order to make it increasingly easier for online customers to find the products they are searching for or wish to buy, even unwittingly. All this is possible thanks to new tools based on AI, already well-developed and well-functioning. A strict confidentiality covers everything else, so our readers have to stay tuned and not to lose the news coming soon: digitalization goes at lightning speed”.