Retail & Consumer Goods, Media & Communications Data & AI Leaders Forum

Recently, we partnered with Microsoft to bring together senior leaders from the Retail & Consumer Goods and Media & Communications sectors. It turned out to be a really good day.

Adam Froggatt, Head of Platform Architecture at Boots UK, shared how Boots has been approaching AI transformation and what has actually made the difference in practice. Stephen Crisp, our CEO and Co-founder, talked through what responsible scaling looks like when you get into the detail of it, covering data platforms, governance and how to prioritise when everything feels urgent. Jed Griffiths, Chief Digital Officer at Microsoft, looked at the human side of things, specifically the leadership and organisational questions that tend to determine whether AI adoption actually sticks. 

 

Across the discussions, five themes kept coming up.

Culture and leadership drive adoption

Successful AI transformation starts with people, not platforms. The organisations making the most progress tend to be the ones where leaders have created the right conditions, championed change and given their teams the confidence to work differently, and that is usually harder than the technical side of things.  

It reflects what we see too. Building data literacy, encouraging curiosity and making data part of everyday decision-making tend to have a much bigger impact than introducing another tool, and the two things need to happen together rather than one after the other.

 

AI must be anchored in business outcomes

AI only becomes useful when it solves a real problem, and there was a clear shift in the room away from isolated pilots and towards initiatives that improve something specific, whether that is customer experience, operational efficiency, or how people spend their time. Starting with a defined outcome keeps projects grounded and makes it much easier to know whether something is actually working. 

 

Governance enables innovation

Once AI starts delivering, attention turns to scaling it, and that is usually where governance comes in. Rather than slowing things down, good governance tends to give organisations the confidence to move faster, because people know what they are working within. Clear ownership and practical guardrails make it easier to experiment without things getting out of hand, and it is something we find ourselves talking about a lot with clients who are ready to move beyond the early stages.

 

Data foundations remain critical. Data foundations remain critical 

None of that works without good data, and everyone in the room knew it. Trusted, accessible, well-governed data is still the difference between projects that scale and projects that stall, and it tends to be the work that does not get enough attention until something goes wrong. Getting the foundations right makes everything else easier, whether that is analytics, automation or AI.

 

Start small, prove value, then scale

The organisations seeing the strongest results are not trying to change everything at once. They are picking a small number of areas where they can show something working early, learn from it, and build from there. It is an approach we have seen work well and mirrors our own Assess, Accelerate, and Amplify methodology. Deliver something useful, learn from it, then build on it. Trying to solve everything in one go is rarely as effective as it sounds. 

 

If any of this resonates with where your organisation is right now, we would be glad to continue the conversation! Contact us now.