The Alldus Podcast - AI in Action

Today's guest is Kolja Dobrindt, VP and Global Head of Analytics at Lidl International in Germany. Kolja is responsible for the end-to-end analytics capability of a $100 billion+, 11,000 store, 32 country organization, ranging from decentralized self-service capabilities to large-scale, operational data products. Lidl are on a mission to build an operational analytics capability from vision and strategy, from hiring the right talent of experts and leaders to defining the organizational and technical framework to deliver data-driven solutions. Kolja has gained broad exposure to the IT and retail industries as well as digital transformation, strategy and project, and program management. He works hand-in-hand with the board and senior executives at Lidl to build a project portfolio of over 20 initiatives with millions in realized benefits already delivered to date. He is also collaborating across business functions and IT to establish a common vision and roadmap to develop broad organizational data and analytics capabilities beyond the core team. In the episode, Kolja will discuss: Interesting projects the Analytics team are working on at Lidl, The key to understanding the problem you are solving, Challenges they need to overcome to achieve success, How the pandemic has changed customer behaviour in retail, The success of their Loyalty app,  Upcoming projects and what the future has in store

Today's guest is Emily Bailey, Director of Data Products & Machine Learning at Rent the Runway in New York. Founded in 2009, Rent the Runway is transforming the way modern women get dressed by pioneering dynamic ownership and enabling women to rent, subscribe to and purchase secondhand clothing. They have been named on CNBC’s “Disruptor 50” five times in ten years and have placed on Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies list multiple times. Rent the Runway is disrupting the $2.4 trillion fashion industry through their in-house proprietary technology and a one-of-a-kind reverse logistics operation. Emily leads a team of talented data scientists and machine learning engineers who work on problems that span all areas of the business and many technical domains, such as recommender systems & personalization, dynamic pricing, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing and operations research. In today's episode, Emily tells us about: The impact Rent the Runway are making in the retail industry, How the pandemic has impacted the business, Leading and building a successful data science team, What they look for when hiring into the team & Interesting projects they are working on at Rent the Runway

Today's guest is Emily Capodilupo, VP of Data Science and Research at WHOOP in Boston. Founded in 2012, WHOOP are on a mission to unlock human performance. They believe that every individual has an inner potential that can be enhanced through continuous monitoring. As such, they have built a system across hardware, software and analytics designed to collect and analyze the most important data on the human body. Today, WHOOP is fortunate to monitor professional athletes, the military, aspirational fitness enthusiasts, Fortune 500 CEOs, executives, doctors, construction workers and more. In today's episode, Emily discusses: The interesting work she does at WHOOP, How Data Science has evolved within the organization, The day-to-day life of the data team, Success stories of the impact WHOOP are making in the industry, and Building and scaling a successful data team

Today's guest is Tameem Hourani, Principal at RapDev in Boston. Founded in 2017, RapDev helps customers of all sizes transform into true DevOps organizations. They have taken several customers from deploying applications once a month to hundreds of times a day. Over the past few years, they have taken customers on journeys ranging from Tool integrations to Culture and Organizational changes. RapDev is a team of experienced ServiceNow Wizards and passionate SRE's contributing to the open-source community, who have built multiple enterprise-scale CI/CD pipelines and integrations to help your organization build velocity in your release cycle. They specialize in helping organizations go through a full transformation of their Development and engineering teams, allowing them to integrate their operations with their development teams. In the episode, Tameem will tell you about: Highlights and learns of his career to date, The work they do at RapDev, Five core values they follow within their organization, How they are making developers lives easier, Advice on how to build a successful implementation & Use cases of the benefits they bring to customers

Today's guest is Yohann Smadja, VP of Data Science at Cedar in New York. Founded in 2016, Cedar provides a smarter way for hospitals, health systems and medical groups to manage the patient payment ecosystem. Their platform delivers modern intelligence to alleviate collections challenges, dramatically improve billing operations and ensure a personalized billing experience for patients. Together with the leading medical groups and hospitals across the country, Cedar is elevating the patient payment experience. With 12 years of experience in the field, Yohann leads the Data Science team who is in charge of making sense of the vast amount of data they have available to help achieve the company’s vision. They build analytics for healthcare providers and their teams to inform the product development process. They tell stories about all aspects of the patient journey and analyze patient behavior, as well as build ML models to drive better decision-making at scale on the platform. In today's episode, Yohann discusses: How they are impacting the patient experience, Interesting projects the data science team are working on, Milestones on his journey with Cedar to date, Challenges the team needs to overcome to achieve success, What excites him for the future & What he looks for when hiring into the team

Today's guest is Arijit Saha, SVP & Head of Engineering at Noodle.ai in San Francisco. Founded in 2016, Noodle.ai is your source for Enterprise AI business applications. They are on a mission to create a world without waste in Manufacturing & Supply Chain with their Vulcan & Athena product suites bringing radical efficiency and extraordinary good. They are building a new category of software products in the Enterprise stack that helps solve the complex challenges associated with Supply Chain and Manufacturing Operations. They define this fog within the operations as Operational Entropy and use the advancement in AI/ML & data processing workflows to build state-of-the-art software products to get rid of this entropy. In today's episode, Arijit discusses: The interesting work he does at Noodle.ai, Problems they are solving within reducing waste in supply chain & manufacturing, Use cases of how they are applying AI and Machine Learning, How the Data & tech team is structured for success,and What excites him for the future at Noodle.ai

Today's guest is Mark Goudzwaard, Director & Global Enterprise Platform Architect at National Grid in Massachusetts. National Grid is one of the world's largest utilities, focused on delivering energy safely, efficiently, reliably and responsibly. They play a vital role in delivering gas and electricity to many millions of people across Great Britain and Northeastern US in an efficient, reliable and safe manner. They are committed to safeguarding our global environment for future generations and providing all our customers with the highest standards of service. In the episode, Mark will tell you about: The interesting work he does at National Grid, Trends he is seeing within ServiceNow in retail and utilities sector, Skills needed to become a great architect, Stakeholder Engagement Best Practices and Advice he would offer to his younger self

Today's guest is Korbinian Spann, Managing Director and Head of Data at Insaas in Munich. Founded in 2019, Insaas is a SaaS solution to predict customer preference in near time for your brand and offering. Their software enables marketing excellence based on data - enriching and transforming large-scale human-generated data into actionable insights. They support brands to take data-driven decisions based on AI and Natural Language Processing. Korbinian is an experienced manager in digital marketing and eCommerce for both the business-to-business and business-to-consumer sectors. His focus lies on industries like fashion, lifestyle, IT and industrial products for local and global corporations and agencies. As a consultant, Korbinian created concepts, strategies and supported his clients as a project manager to successfully implement digital projects. In the episode, Korbinian will discuss: His background and motivation for founding Insaas, Key problems they are solving at Insaas, Challenges they need to overcome to achieve success, The potential of AI with textual data, and The importance of research

Today's guest is Scott Lichtenstein, CEO and Co-Founder at Buyersight in New York. Founded in 2019, BuyerSight powers B2B sales managers with AI-driven recommendations about their reps and customers. BuyerSight's proprietary Natural Language Processing categorizes and analyzes sales interactions at scale, giving managers actionable guidance about where to spend their time for the most impact. Scott is an experienced entrepreneur and startup executive with a proven background in scaling sales, marketing and sales operations for B2B & SaaS technology companies. He has strong expertise in enterprise sales, account-based marketing, sales development, demand generation, digital marketing and data analysis. Scott is also involved in educational nonprofit organizations spreading access to high-quality instruction and learning opportunities. In today's episode, Scott discusses: The motivation for setting up Buyersight, How they are applying AI to simplify sales manager’s lives, Use cases of the benefits they bring to customers, How the Data team is structured for success, What the future holds for Buyersight, and Skills he looks for when hiring into the team

Today's guest is Brandon Nutting, Director of Data Science and Advanced Analytics at MVPindex in Austin, Texas. Founded in 2012, MVPindex's software helps brands, properties and agencies accurately quantify the value of partnerships, sponsorships and activations with an integrated and cohesive omnichannel view that includes broadcast, streaming, social, digital, audio, in-venue, and on location. They are a unique software platform designed to integrate with existing people processes or systems to help automate a service-heavy industry and start driving more efficient and impactful solutions. In his role, Brandon oversees the MVPindex test labs for the implementation of machine learning and data initiatives including current and future-facing innovation, research, development and deployment across the organization. In today's episode, Brandon discusses: The great work they are doing at MVPindex, How new innovation is disrupting the marketing and advertising sector, Use cases of the benefits they bring to customers, Interesting projects within the Data Science team, Transitioning from academia into industry, What’s in store for the future at MVPindex & Building and scaling the Data Science team