When Amy Vener, Microsoft’s Global Retail and Consumer Goods Product Marketing Director, returned from NRF this year, she noticed something different. The conversations had changed. Instead of broad technology discussions about what’s possible, retailers were bringing specific problems to solve and concrete opportunities to capture.
Does that shift from aspirational to practical mark a turning point in retail’s AI journey? We hope so because it’s exactly what the industry needs right now.
The Question That Changes Everything
“What problem are you trying to solve?” It’s become the most important question in retail technology, but Amy adds a critical companion: “What opportunity are you trying to benefit from?”
This dual lens, problems and opportunities, shaped every conversation in Microsoft’s booth at NRF. Retailers weren’t asking about AI capabilities in the abstract. They were asking how to enrich their product catalogs to power conversational commerce. They were exploring how to use search query data to inform merchandising decisions. They were investigating how to shorten campaign workflows from three weeks to days.
The conversations got specific, practical, and actionable.
The Merchandising Awakening
While everyone expected agentic commerce and marketing applications to dominate NRF conversations, Amy observed something unexpected: the merchandising discussions became the deepest and most engaging.
Retailers are discovering that conversational commerce generates remarkably rich data. Conversational commerce is more than just about what customers buy. It’s also about what they’re searching for and can’t find. When a shopper describes needing a suit for their tall, skinny son who plays in the band and needs freedom of movement, that’s product development gold.
Smart retailers are feeding these conversational insights upstream to inform assortment decisions and accelerate product development. It’s agentic AI creating value in ways many didn’t anticipate six months ago.
Adobe reported an eight-times increase in AI traffic to retail websites during the recent holiday period. The base may still be small, but that growth trajectory means the data opportunity is expanding rapidly.
Connected Stores: Operations Meets Commerce
The connected store theme emerged as another critical focus area at NRF. Retailers are finally consolidating data from multiple in-store systems, using AI to make sense of it faster, and outputting actionable tasks that deliver measurable returns.
Amy’s framework for thinking about this is helpful: agentic AI applications fall into two buckets: 1) Operations applications to solve problems, e.g. reducing friction, increasing efficiency, optimizing processes 2) Commerce applications to capture opportunities, e.g. personalizing shopping experiences, discovering new customer segments, accelerating time-to-market.
Connected stores potentially serve both purposes, depending on the specific use case and business objective.
Real Examples: From Estee Lauder to Ralph Lauren
The brands making real progress aren’t chasing every shiny object. They’re starting with clear problems or opportunities aligned to their specific advantages.
Estee Lauder recognized they have decades of rich consumer data that wasn’t being fully leveraged. Their Consumer IQ solution extracts insights from this data to help marketing teams understand what consumers care about most, whether it’s addressing dark circles or reducing fine lines, and ensures product claims and packaging reflect the latest consumer signals.
Ralph Lauren launched “Ask Ralph” in their app, creating a conversational shopping experience that feels like working with a personal stylist in a physical store. It’s grounding outfit recommendations in the context of what customers are doing and what will look good on them specifically.
Both examples share a common thread: they start with understanding what hasn’t changed (consumers want relevant products, shoppers need guidance) and apply technology to improve those fundamental needs.
The Cultural Challenge
Amy’s most important advice for retailers post-NRF? Start with teams that are culturally ready to lean in.
Technology adoption requires a mindset shift. The retailers seeing success aren’t forcing AI initiatives onto resistant teams. They’re identifying functions willing to embrace new tools and new workflows, then building momentum from those early wins.
This means merchandising teams open to using conversational data differently. Marketing teams ready to compress campaign cycles. Store operations teams willing to act on AI-generated task lists.
The playbook Amy recommends: identify willing teams, define clear workflows or use cases that connect across functions, establish specific metrics (efficiency gains, revenue increases, speed improvements), then rinse and repeat based on learnings.
Return on Intelligence, Not Just ROI
Microsoft is framing the conversation around “return on intelligence” rather than just return on investment. It’s a subtle but important distinction.
ROI focuses on cost savings and revenue gains. Return on intelligence asks: are we getting smarter as a business? Are we making better decisions faster? Are we learning from our data in ways that compound over time?
That framing shifts the conversation from justifying individual technology investments to building organizational capabilities that deliver ongoing value.
Where to Focus Now
For retailers heading back to the office post-NRF, Amy’s guidance is refreshingly practical.
She encourages starting with business functions, not IT departments. The merchandising teams, marketing teams, store operations teams, and supply chain teams should be driving these conversations because they own the business metrics that matter.
Identify specific workflows ripe for improvement. Don’t boil the ocean. Find the use case where agentic AI can deliver measurable impact quickly.
Partner with solution providers who understand your industry. Microsoft organizes their resources through the lens of retail lines of business, recognizing that a merchandising director has different needs than a CIO.
This year’s NRF marked a shift from aspirational AI discussions to practical implementation conversations. The retailers who thrive in this next phase will be those who start with clear problems or opportunities, engage willing teams, and measure results that matter to their business.
The technology is ready. The question is whether retailers are ready to move beyond the hype and do the hard work of transformation.
Listen to the full conversation with Amy Vener to hear more insights from Microsoft’s NRF experience and practical guidance for prioritizing your retail AI investments wherever you enjoy getting your podcasts:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Amazon Music
Be careful out there,
– Chris, Anne, and the Omni Talk team
P.S. See our past 8 years of wonderful Spotlight Series podcast guests, featuring roughly 200 movers and shakers in retail, by clicking here
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Omni Talk® is the retail blog for retailers, written by retailers. Chris Walton founded Omni Talk® in 2017 and have quickly turned it into one of the fastest growing blogs in retail.